Home and back again

This past weekend , I felt so lucky, and so full, that I could even put the sinking feeling of Tuesday's scan out of my mind. What could it matter after all of this? Well, of course it matters, but this weekend mattered more. I flew up to Hartford, CT where my sister picked me up, and we drove 45 minutes to East Hampton, MA to Sarah and Freddy Melcher's. Sarah is Chip's sister, and she and her hubby and kids pampered and fed and entertained us, and we didn't even have to pay! We hadn't seen the Melchers in too long, and we had a wonderful dinner, watched some SportsCenter with Luke, their 6th grader, and went happily off to bed in a beautiful old sleigh bed.

In the morning, it now being Saturday, we ate the spread laid out for us and packed up to drive about 3.5hours to Middlebury, Vt to see Will (my son) play lacrosse against the Midd panthers (my old team). As usual, Brent and I laugh at the same things, are appalled by the same politics, and just generally read each other's mind. So, after sharing info about our kids, we settled down to compare new sci fi and fantasy novels we are reading and to start listening to another fabulous Dresden-like book called "Hounded". There is no one else with whom I feel quite so free to share my desire to become a Firefly crew member, taste some spice, or experience a thread fall from dragon back. Ok, can't help it, and what is wrong with all of you naysayers, anyway? Try a new world on for size once in awhile, really.

So, it started snowing at about Okemo, but when we drove into the town of Middlebury, the sun came out over the mountains and it was glorious (even though it was 30 degrees and they had to plow the snow off the turf). We walked around the lovely town, missed the chili at the chili festival (as I did the previous year), and watched Will's team succumb to a strong Midd team (as I did last year). But we got to see him at the crazy parents' tailgate party afterwards, and while I'm not so sure about the facial hair, he is a sweetheart, and it is a pleasure to be with him and to meet his friends and their parents. Then, we turned around and drove back to Easthampton.
When we arrived, the Melchers had made another incredible dinner spread, and we laughed and drank and ate ourselves silly. As Sunday rolled around, we lounged in the sun having coffee, it now being about 55 degrees, and then we were off to met our old friends, the Pattersons, for brunch before Will's team took on the Amherst Lord Jeffs (really?). This time, the Bates Bobcats were playing well, and stayed with the best team in the NESCAC losing 9-11 -- a very respectable game this time. Brent and I had to leave at half time for me to catch my plane back home at 6pm, but the weekend was a grand success. Here's Will with his cousins





You know, there is nothing more wonderful than being with friends and family who all know and love this boy and hope for his success. I felt a little overwhelmed by the whole thing. There we all were in the stands, though we hail from many parts of the country and have different school allegiances, cheering and hollering and hoping that Will and his team played well (even those friends from Amherst!). I think I'm becoming a sentimental old fool, but the whole thing made me weepy. I feel so lucky for all of it--for health enough to travel and run around cheering like an idiot, for a sister who makes my heart happy, for inlaws who have become best friends, for "outlaws" whom I love and who I know have my back as I have theirs, and for a wonderful, happy, beautiful kid who makes my soul sing. Yeah, what a fool am I, but what a great way to go.

How about some Spring poetry:

Revival (Luci Shaw)
March. I am beginning
to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings 
the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost
where the moles have nosed up their
cold castings, and the ground cover
in shadow under the cedars hasn't softened
for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice
around foliage and stem
night by night,

but as the light lengthens, preacher
of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches,
his large gestures beckon green
out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting
from the cotoneasters. A single bee
finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow
aconites glowing, low to the ground like
little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up
a purple hand here, there, as I stand
on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat
and light like a bud welcoming resurrection,
and my hand up, too, ready to sign on
for conversion.

Looking at the Sky (Anne Porter)
I never will have time
I never will have time enough
To say
How beautiful it is
The way the moon
Floats in the air
As easily
And lightly as a bird
Although she is a world
Made all of stone.

I never will have time enough
To praise
The way the stars
Hang glittering in the dark
Of steepest heaven
Their dewy sparks
Their brimming drops of light
So fresh so clear
That when you look at them
It quenches thirst.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Doing it right in Chicago and Lines for Winter (Mark Strand), Picnic, Lightning (Billy Collins), and Storm Windows (Howard Nemerov)

I have just returned from a short 3-day stay in Chicago with my friend, college room-mate, and the funniest person I know. Make that the sharpest person I know; she has a pithy rebuttal ready to launch before you have even thought of making a comment. She is unique and wonderful, and she invited me to share her obsession, the Blackhawks. Well actually, I think it is an obsession with Marian Hossa mostly. Truly, even when struck with food poisoning, as she was when I arrived, she still made me laugh, and then she made me go to the Blackhawks game with a friend of hers. This friend is a healthcare lobbyist in Chicago, and we had a lot to talk about. She seemed equally obsessed, as did all the wacky fans there that night. Betsy had prepared me already by sending me a Patty Kane jersey for my 50th birthday. I have been warding off my drooling son from taking my jersey away to college for the last year, but I prevailed. So, be-jerseyed, off we went to the game. I like hockey; my kid played for years. I know most of the rules, but this woman was yelling out the players ages, the year they were traded (and if they missed a pass, how likely they were to be traded back), their political leanings, and the names of the players' siblings....I have never seen anything like it. Not only that, she did it while drinking lustily with the surrounding crowd. Quite impressive, really. The older woman next to me was videotaping most plays of the game on her camera...through the glass. No kidding. I finally asked her if her son was a player, and she just looked at me and said, "I always tape the games. I go home and watch then again." "No kidding", I said. We didn't have much to talk about after that. Anyway, my assessment was that the Hawks were exhausted and let the Predators walk all over them. And they tried that empty net thing. Never works, if you ask me. Final score: Hawks 1/Predators 3.

Day 2: Betsy is much perkier today and I play with the guinea pigs and have a love bird perched on my finger with her youngest child, Lauren. then the kids are off to school and Betsy and I plan the day. we have to have breakfast at a wonderful cafe that we walk to, and we have to get me to the Block Center (Integrative Oncology center that I sometimes double check my progress/tests/scans/treatment with ). I have to be there at 2 and we are going to the Chicago Lyric Opera's production of Aida (and sitting in fabulous first row mezzanine seats) at 7:30pm. How about that? One impossible love affair to another! We make it to the Block Center right on time, and although recent scans are a bit hard to wade through--is this better, worse, what? I am a bit of an enigma as I have lived a long time and the scans get more and more complicated. A little more brightness in the right shoulder, a little more spine sclerosis (healing?), perhaps a bit worse overall......unclear. So, as usual, they agreed with my course and my wonderful oncologist and they were happy with my progress. Maybe that should have made me uncomfortable as I hadn't seen him in two years, and he sounded like he was expecting worse, but whatever. He also suggested that there are still several drugs, etc that can be used; I haven't used them up yet. that's encouraging too...I think. Anyway, they drew what looked like a liter of blood and sent us on our way to change into our glad rags.

One of the most wonderful things about being with Betsy and her family is being in Chicago-- the city is so accessible, yet they live in a lovely little suburb. We walked to the train station with many other opera goers and in 20 minutes, we were walking across the river to the Chicago Civic Opera House. This is a gorgeous building a bit like Severance Hall. We got to our box early and pilfered the front seats. Betsy pulled out her great grandmother's opera glasses and we were ready. Aida is a big production, but we didn't have any elephants. What we did have was a soprano to die for. THe tenor, Ramades, was pretty fantastic too, but not quite Aida. the music (Giuseppe Verde) was wonderful. We sat in front of twin ladies who were enjoying the show and succumbed to Betsy's pleas to take our picture....over and over again. We had a marvelous time and didn't we look stunning too. Back to the train and home in 20.









What a wonderful 2 1/2 days; what a pleasure to see my dear friend so happy and her family thriving. What a fantastic idea to keep finding adventures near and far.
How about some poetry from three different Poets Laureate that I really like.

Lines for Winter (Mark Strand)
                                  -for Ros Krauss
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself--
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going.  And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Picnic, Lightning (Billy Collins)
                              My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)
                              when I was three.  --Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling ou on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatients--
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaflike flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.

Storm Windows (Howard Nemerov)

People are putting up storm windows now,
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain
Drove them indoors.  So, coming home at noon,
I saw storm windows lying on the ground,
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind.

The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by,
Something I should have liked to say to you,
Something...the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water...something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thelma, Louise, and Calamity Lynn head West

I have just returned from a 2700 mile drive from Cleveland to Vancouver, British Columbia, and believe it or not, I didn't want it to end. Ok, picture 2 old friends, Louise-Betsy and Thelma-Lissa, who have essentially raised their kids together and get called sisters alot, along with Betsy's wonderful mother in law, Calamity Lynn, deciding to radically welcome ADVENTURE.

Around the Thanksgiving table this year, the discussion turned to how to get Alex's car from Cleveland to where he is playing junior hockey in Langley, Brithish Columbia. Alex is Betsy's 19 year old son, my godson, and Lynn's grandson. I'm afraid it was I who might have said, "Let's drive!" Before we knew it, a plan was forming and Lynn was in too. Why not, I ask you? When was the last time you saw a prairie dog in his natural surroundings, cold as they were? Looked in wonder at the badlands as they rippled the vast, flat landscape into my mother's favorite ribbon candy? How about walked around the first national park, Devil's Tower? Ate lunch in Montana with a view that took your breath away? Cackled with two gas station attendants in Wallace, Wyoming at 6am as they took apart the mayor for his shabby decorating of the town tree? Chatted with Ranger Butch as he described the 1500 Minuteman missiles silo-ed all over the Western States during the Cold War? Drove blithely over the Snoqualmie Pass gazing at the scenery without realizing that we had made it over? When, I ask you?

Not only did we have perfect, clear, sunny weather essentially every minute of the 4 day drive, we found ourselves being warmly welcomed at every single place we chose to stop. Talk about radical welcome! I heard this phrase used at church on Sunday. My dear friend and minister, Pastor Beal, used this term in her sermon about the birth of Jesus as a radical welcome to us all. I liked the phrase a great deal. We travelers felt the world embrace us and welcome us everywhere we went. What a beautiful country this is, too, even in the cold. Maybe that's why there were no lines at any national site. We laughed and realized that everything is free at this time of year (ie: boarded up), and there are no crowds; in fact, there often was not another breathing human within miles! You should try Northern Idaho in December.....magnificent! We also found our way to a Louisiana BBQ joint in a snow squall in Wyoming....you just never know what you'll find until you dive in and welcome the adventure.

Thelma, Louise, and Calamity Lynn are already thinking about their next radical adventure. Maybe the lower route to Zion, etc...or maybe the Lewis and Clark trail.....hmmmm, so many options. If anyone is interested, I kept a very brief travel-blog during the trip. the Day 4 blog is right below this one; the first three days somehow got stuck to the right on the blog under the year 2000. I can only wonder how that happened!
How about some poetry. I feel as if this wonderful wanderlust i've been feeling and and the vast open, starry skies I've been seeing require a bit of the good Vermonter, Robert Frost. How about two from the bard:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
As it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh,I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Choose Something Like a Star

Oh star (the fairest one in sight)
we grant your loftiness the right
to some obscurity of cloud--
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell us something in the end.
As steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from it's sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks from us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Day 4

Left at mile marker 2230 and bid a fond farewell to Wallace. Actually, we loved Wallace. On our way out (at 5am), we stopped at a gas station run by two women who were laughing hysterically when I walked in about how pathetically their grand evergreen was decorated with Christmas lights....and they were right. We pulled out in the dark and just as the day began to lighten, we pulled into Coeur D'Alene to see the huge, beautiful lake. As Betsy said, Coeur D'Alene means, roughly translated mind you, "those scuzzy Indian traders" --too bad because the words are quite lovely. Here's what the lake looks like:



This is a very upscale place, and as we pulled into the visitor's parking across from the lake, we saw something like 30 trees intricately decorated with tiny white lights. Ms. Calamity said, "Wallace, eat your heart out!". Yup.

So, we pulled out of town and found ourselves in the glorious state of WASHINGTON!!! We drove through Spokane and over the Columbia River:



and farther and then, we began to see signs for the Snoqualmie pass. But again, the weather was perfect and we were through the pass before we even realized we had started! Thank goodness the chains stayed in the car! How lucky were we. And then we stopped off at Snoqualmie Falls ( where The show Twin Peaks was shot) and looked at the fabulous falls ( hard to see with all the spray).





Then we were on the way to Seattle and then heading up 405 and then 5 and all the way to the border. Here, we had a little snafu as Betsy forgot to say that the car was staying in Canada. When he figured this out, I think he was a little unclear about us, and he made us go inside and talk to an agent there. The guy inside turned out to be vey nice, and in about 15 minutes fate getting on the road, we arrived:




Yahoo! 2700 miles later, here we are with Mount Rainier peaking his lovely head over the pines in the backyard.....NICE.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Coeur D'alene

Ms. Reddy's woods and Dharma (Billy Collins), Bless Their Hearts (Richard Newman), and Remember (Joy Harjo)

Good morning, everyone!  I have been doing a lot of walking, walking, walking with the pup.  Yesterday, Sunday, I took the pup out to my dad’s old school and walked our typical walk through deep woods then a shorter hop out into an old orchard and back across the expanse of playing fields.  This is a lovely loop, no matter what the time or weather.  The woods look different every time—the light slants differently, the leaf cover is thinner, the colors have a narrower palette, etc.  But this day, I wasn’t able to free my busy mind or to practice my breathing so that I am fully alert, listening, watching, and not doing too much thinking about anything but what’s right in front of me.  Actually, I failed miserably.  I fell into the age old argument I have with myself about what I’ve given up, what I haven’t accomplished, etc, etc, etc.  Anyone know this conversation?  It goes a bit like this: If I had stayed on the track I was on, I would be this, that, and the other thing, full of accolades and initials and articles after my name, and I would be receiving unparalleled admiration (and even a touch of jealousy) from friends and colleagues alike.  I would have been much more than I am now had I just stayed put and continued my climb up the ladder.  Yup, that’s the essence of it.  The other side goes more like this: I moved off the traditional ladder initially because I got sick, but I didn’t jump right back on because in truth, it didn’t quite fit or fulfill me.  I have actually become more, and learned much more, than I would have because of the difficult, wrenching fall off this beloved ladder, and because of all the work I’ve put in to understand who I am and how I want to use the rest of my life.  While I believe the latter whole-heartedly most of the time, I still sometimes find myself caught up in the old argument again.  At least now, I feel as if I take two steps forward for each step back, and not the reverse, but I clearly have not thrown off this old cloak of expectation and guilt for good.  I will continue to work on it.

After emerging sweaty and frustrated from this argument and finding the adorable puppy again, I found myself humming.  At first, I wasn’t sure what I was humming.  But when I felt that flash of recognition, I doubled over in a fit of laughter.  The dog thought I had completely lost it and took off after a chipmunk.  There I was in the middle of the woods cracking myself up.  This, my friends, is a very useful tool to have in your toolbag.  Laughter is a wonderful thing, especially when you can crack yourself up all by yourself.  It was Helen Reddy singing in my ear…..remember?  One line of the song kept rebounding….”But I’m  still an embryo, with a long, long way to go……”.  Ok, I found the whole experience both deeply disturbing, and wildly funny.  Of course Helen swoops in at this particular moment of vulnerability! Let’s do it together:

“Oh yes I am wise

But it’s wisdom born of pain

Yes, I’ve paid the price

But look how much I gained

If I have to, I can do anything.

I am strong (strong) I am invincible (invincible)

I am woman”

Good heavens, Helen Reddy.  Never liked her or the song until yesterday, but ok, I get the message already.  I am strong, I am invincible, I am Wissie!  I am still laughing.  So, how about some poetry? 

Dharma (Billy Collins)

The way the dog trots out the front door

every morning

without a hat or an umbrella,

without any money

or the keys to her doghouse

never fails to fill the saucer of my heart

with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example

of a life without encumbrance—

Thoreau in his curtainless hut

with a single plate, a single spoon?

Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world

with nothing but her brown coat

and her modest blue collar,

following only her wet nose,

the twin portals of her steady breathing,

followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside

every morning

and eat all his food

what a model of self-containment she

would be,

what a paragon of earthly detachment.

If only she were not so eager

for a rub behind the ears,

so acrobatic in her welcomes,

if only I were not her god.

Bless Their Hearts (Richard Newman)

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it’s OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids’
toys—they’re only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

Remember (Joy Harjo)

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.

Puppies, Peru, and Faces of Braga (David Whyte) and Two Countries (Naomi Shihab Nye)

I am several posts behind, and sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by what I haven’t written.  But here I sit with our new 15-week old puppy out cold in my lap, while I watch the first Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring) for the 75,000^th time….it is soooo good.  But that niggling feeling I get when I haven’t written for awhile is now manifesting as crushing chest pain, so I’ll write, I'll write. 

I have been saved lately; isn’t that something?  I’ve been saved by a puppy and a remarkable trip to sacred, energy-filled Peru for 10 glorious, fellowship-filled, mountain-spirit-embodied, open-hearted, chakra-gardened days.  Oh, and did I mention the incredible, energetic orgy of color that hit our retinas everywhere we turned, and the most delicious, organic, vegetarian food in abundance waiting for us at every meal...it was heaven, I tell you. 

So recently, life had turned a bit less than joyous.  We’d lost an incredible character who loved us in my mother-in-law, Nancy, awhile back, but her absence has become truly palpable for all of us.  We’d lost our dear, dear doggie, we’d had to say goodbye again to our lovely college boy after a wonderful summer home, we had begun anticipating that our youngest would be flying the coop too as we head into the maelstrom of college searching, and finally I’ve been a bit sad that my last chemo treatment “didn’t do all we hoped it would.” After 6 months of slowly losing energy and the ability to bend my fingers without pain due to this drug, I seem not to have benefitted much from all the drama.  Oh well…. I am now able to flex all my fingers and my energy level has improved on a non-chemo, 6-month hormone shot regimen.  Let me just make this aside here, as this new treatment makes me want to kiss the nurses who stand on either side of my backside and drive large needles full of viscous fluid into both buttock cheeks simultaneously.  They just don’t seem to understand that they really can’t hurt me with this stuff.  In fact, stick the needles in my eyeballs; I won’t flinch.  Not having my hands and feet in ice as the darn chemo infuses has been a miracle….and I can take a bath again without being coated in an itchy rash.  Joy!  Ah, the little things are so important.

All in all though, we have all felt a bit broken-hearted.  So what do we do?  We rescue a puppy, completely forgetting the possibility of enjoying the new freedom we might have gained from not having a dog.  Oh no, the kids and I needed a puppy, so we found one.  In our excitement, we had all forgotten the enormous amount of work required to care for one.  But she is sooooooo adorable, and she is trying so hard to please us, and I get to nurture another small creature.

So, to Peru.  I knew the group I have often travelled with was going to Peru, but I had no intention of going….too far away, too much hassle.  But when an opening occurred, and with it an opportunity (and easy use of frequent flyer miles), I jumped at the chance, and I’m so glad I did.  Peru was an amazing success.  Our group bonded easily and with support and energy enough for everyone.  Our altitude medications worked, along with the coca leaves, leaving most of us feeling well enough to acclimatize on the streets of Cuzco where we found color, a cathedral with a painting of the last supper featuring guinea pigs as the dinner entree, alpaca everything you ever thought you wanted, and smiles and warmth and vendors with names like Jimmie Carter and Mercedes Benz (maybe next time!).  We met our wonderful guide, Gabriella, whose sense of spirituality and sacred space in addition to her deep knowledge of the region made the week a joy.  We made our way to the Sacred Valley and our eco-lodge, the Willka T’ika, and found a place that changed something in all of us, I think.  We spent a week deep in chakra gardens built around an 800 year old Licuma tree.  We had incredible vegetarian food grown on the premises and served beautifully and with such love.  Every night it got quite cold as the sun vanished behind the mountains, and every night we found a hot-water bottle in our beds and every morning a basket of fresh herbs to make tea with……and so much more.  I took two evening baths under the Southern Hemispheric wash of stars while I soaked in every herb and flower on the premises and thanked my lucky stars for being alive and being right where I was. 

One day we wound our way up to a school that the Willka T’ika and Carol’s foundation support, what a highlight for us all.  We were greeted by children in a cacophony of colors holding flowers for us.  They sang, we sang, and we all laughed.  There is a word, ayni, that means open-hearted in the native language, and almost everyone we met exuded it.  There was joy, joy in being alive, joy in loving the world (the world of three levels--spirit, here and now, ancestors), and joy in giving of what you have.  What a world this word creates, and we all felt its pull.  The next day we were off to Machu Picchu.  We had to awake at the crack of dawn, get on a bus into Urubamba, get on a train, and as we watched, the scenery changed into wilder vegetation, snow-capped peaks and the Urubamba river cascading by the train-tracks….amazing.  And then we were there, and what a place there was.  I hadn’t really known what to expect, but I didn’t expect to feel quite so much.  As you finally get up to the ruins of MP on a scary, switch-back-laden bus ride, you round a corner, and there, bursting out of the mountains is that picture of MP that everyone has seen, but it is so breath-taking to be there.  Not only that, there is some sort of subtle, humming energy thrumming around the place that is hard to miss, especially with Gabriella around to help us feel and understand it.  The level of sophistication of the builders (no mortar, just perfect, interlacing stones), the positioning of windows, doors, and temples (everything lining up with celestial occurrences or directions or mountains, etc), and the sacredness of many places within the ruins is quite overwhelming.  We were lucky enough to have another day to explore and climb and experience the ruins in the early morning with very few people around.  There is a place in the women’s temple where a stone condor sits on the ground with her wings of stone suspended behind her.  Something about this particular place really felt sacred to me, here was a sacred space where something important occurred, some rite of passage, or birthing or who knows, but something happened here; you can feel it.  In fact, this place made me want to run off the cliff flapping my wings and soar my condor-self off into the clouds.  Good thing I didn’t; it was pretty scary way up there.

So I have talked too much, but I am fiercely holding onto a bit of that Peruvian energy here in rainy Cleveland.  Bella is by my side, requiring a lot of us, but giving a lot too.  I am going to work very hard at remembering and embodying “ayni”.  I want my world, my tribe, my place to be full of it!  How about some poetry?

for everyone and you wonderful Peru fellow-travelers, here's the David Whyte poem written out, and another by another  favorite poet, Naomi Nye:

The Faces of Braga  (David Whyte)

In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight
the old shrine room waits in silence.

While above the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, “Will you step through?”

And the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons. 

We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word, 

See faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved above,
eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light. 

Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them. 

Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers 

We have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
their slowly opening faces turned toward the mountains. 

Cared in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve throught delight of the carver’s hand. 

If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver’s hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface. 

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core. 

We would smile too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone. 

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good. 

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain. 

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carvers hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers 

Feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky. 

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration 

To merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver’s hands.

Two Countries (Naomi Shihab Nye)

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves. 

A big loss for us, Percy (Mary Oliver), Lucky (Anna Kamienska)

I have just returned from a week in Massachusetts with my mother and my sister, and I am in mourning.  We lost our 11 year old Weimaraner, Greta, the day I went to pick up my sister and drive East.  For those of you who were not familiar with Ms. Greta, she was a most remarkable dog.  Even as a baby, she had a brush with illness that should have killed her, and then throughout her long and eventful life, she had at least 4 more significant episodes with illness, toxic exposure, or trauma that should have killed her, but only seemed to make her wobbly for a few days or weeks, and then there she was again.  We grew so used to her remarkable healing powers, that we all just assumed that she would always get better.

Thank goodness my son was here this summer.  He and the dog grew up together and shared a bed until Will went off to college last year.  Now a weimaraner grows into a big dog--short hair, velvet ears, with a coat the color of warm cocoa with flecks of silver, and bony!  The boy would grow to be quite large as well.  Every morning, I would find them with both heads on Will's pillow and two rapidly enlarging, bony bodies intertwined.  How they slept like that, i have no idea, nor do i understand why I never took a picture......

And the sound she made when she was happy is still banging around in my brain.  She howled her greeting every morning while lying upside down with her feet in the air awaiting the belly rub, and every time someone she loved came home.  The song was doubly long and emotional when that someone had been gone more than a day.  The sound made us laugh every time we heard it.  Why I never thought to record it, just once, I cannot imagine.  It was such a constant in our lives.

She was such a constant.  She was always there when our lives turned topsy-turvy with kids becoming teens and having the audacity to pull away and even leave, husbands falling out, illnesses, parents dying, etc, etc,etc.  She was a steady presence when life threw us off balance.  And when we had to deal with my cancer returning to make new trouble, there she was on the bed next to me. There she was when I had to do that chemo thing again and felt lousy, there she was when I struggled to be civil to my family as i felt more and more tired from more and more treatments, there she was, there she was, there she was.  I am afraid that I imbued her with meaning that could never really be true.--that if she could survive this insult, so could I, if she could endure treatment without complaining, maybe I could too, and I even let myself think that if she decided that she would not die, maybe i could manage that too....  I know, it was silly, but there it is. I believe that the lesson for me in all of this is to just be thankful for her, for all of her, for all the time i had with her.

But finally, finally she did not rebound from the large tumor in her belly that had been there quite awhile.  When the beautiful beast put her head in my lap and groaned, I knew, we all knew, something was different.  This time she was suffering.  Thankfully, Will was here to sleep with her that night and give her narcotics to ease her pain, and to finally recognize that she was not going to get better.  Then the beautiful, sobbing boy wrapped the lovely dog in a blanket and with my husband's help, carried her into the vet's office.  Our vets were magnificent, and they knew her well and reinforced the need to put her out of her suffering, and then she was gone. ( I have to say that we received a letter from the vet as well as from a specialist who had seen Greta once some months back.  Wouldn't it be magnificent if all of our healthcare was as caring and thoughtful as this veterinary care!)

How lucky we were to have known the love of this dog for so long.  And how many remarkable lessons have we all learned from this little blue-eyed puppy who became such a part of all of us.  I know I will grieve for my dear friend and constant companion for some time, but I also know that she would want us to get going and find another dog to help us heal and love again.  So dear Greta, we all hope you are somewhere where you can feel our love and how the breeze lifts your wonderful ears as you run and sing and eat again!

thank you for all of it

Percy (three)  (Mary Oliver) (note: Percy is Ms. Oliver's dog)


He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

Funny (Anna Kamienska)

What's it like to be a human
the bird asked

I myself don't know
it's being held prisoner by your skin
while reaching infinity
being a captive of your scrap of time
while touching eternity
being hopelessly uncertain
and helplessly hopeful
being a needle of frost
and a handful of heat
breathing in the air
and choking wordlessly
it's being on fire
with a nest made of ashes
eating bread
while filling up on hunger
it's dying without love
it's loving through death

That's funny said the bird
and flew effortlessly up into the air