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

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith (Mary Oliver), God Says Yes To Me (Kaylin Haught), Yes (William Stafford)

I haven't written for too long, but here I go. Yesterday I finally went to my beloved yoga, pilates, aerobics class (ok, fusion yoga), and there in front of me were my beautiful daughter- a long, cool drink of water in her yoga garb, my son-muscled, tousled, gorgeous and laughing at himself, his lovely girlfriend who is equally as stunning, and behind them, us. We are a motley crew of aging men and women still hoping to make it through the class without passing out or throwing up.

I haven't been to this class for awhile, but I used to go several times a week and feel so good about myself. I could do it, I was toning up, and there was just enough yoga to feel myself begin to relax and breathe a little. Lately, I've been slogging through life and treatment and feeling a bit off balance. One of the first things to go was this class. So imagine, there I am with my two friends next to me and the gorgeous three (TGT) in front by the mirrors (gasp, no mirrors for us). Our stunning leader uses wonderfully fun, current music during the fast pieces (lady gaga is a favorite) and often some country music during the yoga pieces, and we are often laughing at the music as much as ourselves. I sometimes have a different response, however. She used to play a country song about a father talking to his daughter who wants to get going on her life a bit faster than he thinks she should. The bloody song uses this refrain over and over, "you're going to miss this". Know this one? Ok, so I'm often weeping while trying to chaturanga without slipping all over the place.....I suspect this is very disturbing to those around me.

Yesterday, however, I was so excited to be there with my friends and TGT. But I was unsure whether i could do any of it as I'm feeling a bit tired these days, but otherwise ok. So off we go, weights up, legs flying, then a yoga section, then a fast section, then yoga again. We are holding plank (forever), then turning to hold ourselves in side plank, arms up, top leg up, and just here it happens. I am struggling, but doing it, and then .....I am smiling, I am saying thank you, thank you for letting my body still move like this, oh thank you for those kids, thank you for this day, thank you for the woman next to me who just smiled when I put my foot on her tush by mistake....just thank you for all of it, every beautiful piece of it, even through disease and death and police action and teenagers. Through all of it! Isn't this what it is all about? We all have stuff, this much I've learned. My family is no different than any other --our stuff just tends to be a bit ....dramatic. So there is the lesson for me. I must continue to thank my stuff every day for teaching me gratitude--deep, tear-welling, body rocking gratitude for every moment--even during those moments when I want too much to fling these undeserving, disrespectful, purely icky teenagers out a high window. No one said this was anything but a process...

Enjoy some poetry and have a great couple of weeks. The Stafford poem came from church this am.
For all you Clevelanders, Nancy Gilkeson's memorial service is this Thursday at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls at 2pm

Cheers!

Yes (William Stafford)
It could happen anytime, tornado
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out--no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

God Says Yes To Me (Kaylin Haught)
I asked God if it is ok to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was ok to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
She said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even ok if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
Who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Little Summer Poem Touching on the Subject of Faith ( Mary Oliver)
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything--
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening the damp powers,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker--
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing--
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness of the banyan feet--
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees
And the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Nancy and Let Evening Come (Jane Kenyon), Crossing the Bar (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)

Tonight, I would like to say a fond farewell to my mother-in-law, Nancy. While I have known her for a quarter century, many people who may see this have known her for much, much longer, as she had a rich and vast array of friends who loved her dearly. I want to speak only about her last few weeks, however, as I found them remarkable and transforming and worthy of many more pages than I will write here. Truly, i know i speak for her daughters and her son when i say that she saved some of her very best living for last.

We were quite concerned that her very difficult cancer diagnosis might well lead to a very difficult end, but like many, many times in the past, Nancy had a surprise for all of us. With her daughters firmly camped at her side, she spent three weeks showing us all how to be open, vulnerable, scared, funny, sad, repentant, feisty, and loving as she came to terms with the inevitability of her death. Even when she couldn't swallow her own secretions....even then, she found ways to laugh at herself often, to delight in the love of her children, and to charm everyone who came near her. Not once did she ever utter a word of complaint. To those of us in her room during the last few days of her life, her struggle to understand just how to "let go" was so.... Nancy. She needed to talk it through, out loud, and this process was so open and honest, and so woven through with laughter and stories and tears, that we felt we were bearing witness to something quite miraculous.

She talked herself and us through her death, and the experience was transformative for us all. Leave it to Nancy, all 60-some pounds of her, to transform herself and heal her children in those final few, remarkable days. And she died on Easter morning, no less, as if we could have forgotten! So here's to Nancy! May she rest in peace and be surrounded by love. She certainly was so surrounded here. I will never forget the end of her life; she surprised and delighted and taught us all, and I'm sure she planned it just this way. Rest easy and go with God, Granny-Nanny! We love you.

Here are three wonderful poems that are fitting for this post.  I am very sure that Nancy was much more than a visitor on this earth, the Kenyon poem I find so soothing and lovely and comforting, and the Tennyson is a classic and yes, send me out to sea when it is time.

Let Evening Come (Jane Kenyon)

Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. Crossing the Bar (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) Sunset and evening star    And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar,    When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep,    Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep    Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell,    And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell,    When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place    The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face    When I have crossed the bar. When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)   When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse   to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox;   when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,   I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering; what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?   And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,   and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,   and each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does, toward silence,   and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.   When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.   When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument.   I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Istanbul (Billy Collins) and Long Winter (Tim Nolan)

Seriously, who forgets to go to chemotherapy? really, this doesn't happen. Most people think about there next chemo alot, dread it, work on screwing up their courage to sit in the seat again, but they REMEMBER. I came home from Boston partly to get my chemo,.....and I forgot. I really did. So, I called the nurse and told her that I forgot to report to my chemo chair. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and then she said,"...What?" I repeated myself, although I think I had been very clear the first time. I decided to embellish just a little to fill the silence. "I just got back from Turkey and watching my son play lacrosse in Maine, and my sisters-in-law are here as my mother-in-law is very I'll, and I haven't really unpacked from either trip as things have been a bit busy at home. in fact, I'm not sure I have yet uncovered my teenager from somewhere under her piles of detritus on the third floor." And so on.
There was a longer pause.

And here I am now, sitting in my chemo chair gazing out on a gorgeous day, only a few days late. What a whirlwind the last weeks have been--full of incredible sights, sounds, sisterehood, spirituality, and sadness. Turkey was such a surprise! Gazing up at the arches in the Blue Mosque, eating pepper paste and pomegranate juice and eggplant, browsing the spice market, entranced by the whirling dervishes, and standing with Paul in spirit at Ephesis and Pergamom and Sardis and Corinth in Greece. Amazing, remarkable, renewing, restoring, and all I could have hoped for and more. Love the pilgrim thing! Really focusing on the "why" of what we were doing and seeing and being very intentional as we learned and moved from site to site made the trip feel very diffent from a vacation trip, and much better.







Also seeing the boy dressed in his Bates uniform and playing NESCAC lacrosse AND working hard and loving his first year in college has been a gift....and I am supposed to go back for one more game next Tuesday.






What about some poetry. I did send some of my trip members this poem by Billy Collins called, "Istanbul". It really captures the city's ancientness and those roman baths, I think.  Then, a little ode to spring.  Enjoy

Istanbul (Billy Collins)
Istanbul by Billy Collins

It was a pleasure to enter by a side street
in the center of the city
a bathhouse said to be 300 years old,
old enough to have opened the pores of Florence Nightingale
and soaped the musical head of Franz Liszt.

And it was a pleasure to drink
cold wine by a low wood fire
before being directed to a small room in an upper gallery,
a room with a carpet and a narrow bed
where I folded my clothes into a pile
then came back down, naked
except for a gauzy striped cloth tucked around my waist.

It was an odd and eye-opening sensation
to be led by a man with close-cropped hair
and spaces between his teeth
into a steamy marble rotunda
and to lie there alone on the smooth marble
watching the droplets fall through the beams
of natural light in the high dome
and later to hear the song I sang –
‘She Thinks I Still Care’ – echo up into the ceiling.

I felt like the last of the sultans
when the man returned and began to scrub me –
to lather and douse me, scour and shampoo me,
and splash my drenched body
with fresh warm water scooped from a marble basin.

But it was not until he sudsed me
behind my ears and between my toes
that I felt myself filling with gratitude
the way a cloud fills with rain,
the way a glass pipe slowly fills with smoke.

In silence I thanked the man
who scrubbed the bottoms of my feet.
I thanked the history of the Turkish bath
and the long chain of bathmen standing unshaven,
arms folded, waiting for the next customer
to come through the swinging doors of frosted glass.

I thanked everyone whose job
it ever was to lay hands on the skin of strangers,
and I gave general thanks that I was lying
facedown in a warm puddle of soap
and not a warm puddle of blood
in some corner of this incomprehensible city.

As one bucket after another
of warm water was poured over my lowered head,
I stopped thinking of who and what to thank
and rode out on a boat of joy,
a blue boat of marble and soap,

rode out to the entrance of the harbour
where I raised a finger of good-bye
then felt the boat begin to rise and fall
as it met the roll of the incoming waves,
bearing my body, my clean, blessed body out to sea.


Long Winter (Tim Nolan)
So much I've forgotten
the grass

the birds
the close insects

the shoot—the drip—
the spray of the sprinkler

freckles—strawberries—
the heat of the Sun

the impossible
humidity

the flush of your face
so much

the high noon
the high grass

the patio ice cubes
the barbeque

the buzz of them—
the insects

the weeds—the dear
weeds—that grow

like alien life forms—
all Dr. Suessy and odd—

here we go again¬—
we are turning around

again—this will all
happen over again—

and again—it will—

Turkey, Greece and Go to the Limits of Your Longing, Back From the Fields, The Moment

I'm on a threshold,  right now,  as I mentally and physically pack my bags for our pilgrimage to Turkey and Greece on Friday. I've been hungry for this trip, for its preparation, for the people I've met through this wonderful little church who have streched my mind and challenged me to dig deep to find my gifts and goals, and I'm hungry to get going!

Maybe I feel just a little time pressed too...maybe, but I have a deep feeling that my years of agitation, of stewing in my own juices, of feeling that there is so very much more, but not having a clue what this "more" is or how to pursue it has reached a threshold. I love how Rilke puts this feeling of longing, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror...".  And so, I am perched upon this threshold, one hand on the handle, one foot here, and one foot just about to find the unknown ancient Roman road on the other side. I go holding a sense of possibility and wonder, and gently holding open the opportunity for deeper experience and growth. Who knows? Hopefully I will blog throughout, so I'll report back in words and pictures, but this feels like a beginning for me, and I'm eager for it.

What about a little poetry? I will include the whole Rilke poem thanks to Clover and two others that have come my way lately. I love the idea of walking through ancient, foreign lands and having some of that land come back with me--mentally and physically (Back from the Fields).  And I love the stillness in the third that I don't feel just now, but I am going to cultivate tomorrow!


Go To the Limits of Your Longing (R. Rilke)

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Back from the Fields (Peter Everwine)
Until nightfall my son ran in the fields,
looking for God knows what.
Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing.
Something to fill an empty spot.
Maybe a luminous angel
or a country girl with a secret dark.
He came back empty-handed,
or so I thought.
Now I find them:
thistles, goatheads,
the barbed weeds
all those with hooks or horns
the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones
those wearing lantern jaws,
old ones in beards, leapers
in silk leggings, the multiple
pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those
with juices and saps
like the fingers of thieves
nation after nation of grasses
that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds
and grab handholds 
in whatever lean place.
It’s been a good day.

The Moment
by Marie Howe 

Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment

when,   nothing 

happens 

no what-have-I-to-do-today-list 


maybe   half a moment 

the rush of traffic stops. 

The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be 

slows to silence, 

the white cotton curtains hanging still.

The Poet with His Face in His Hands (Mary Oliver) and The Winged Energy of Delight (Rainier Maria Rilke)

I parked my car and walked through last Friday's blizzard, across the street and between the buildings and into the medical school.  The place was quiet, as for the first time in my memory, the university and medical school were closed due to weather; therefore, all non-essential personnel were not required to be at work.  Friday, I was entirely non-essential, but I had a doctor's appointment and then my second round of chemo scheduled, so I continued to walk through the building and out the other side into the parking garage toward more essential personnel.  From here, I walked outside and across the street to the entrance to the hospital.  All in all, this is about a 10 minute walk. I walked in, got onto an elevator to the 6th floor cancer center, and hopped directly into the registration queue.  Here's the thing.  Whether you are at the front or the end of the line, you will wait until one of the unhappy employees looks up and invites you forward.  I have been doing this for years now, and I am  slowly losing my "good patient-ness".  I wonder why we still don't understand that the patient is the client here.  Really, how hard should it be to say, "I'll be right with you", I wonder?  Oh well, I really don't understand it, but there it is.  I move from there to the waiting room where I sit and wait for the MA to come out and yell, "McKinley!".  You know, it is hard enough to ride up to the 6th floor and just get out of the elevator, but this, this really burns me.  I am very proud of myself, however, because I actually told the MA that I found it really hard to be referred to this way and could she please consider using both the first name and the last, or saying "Ms McKinley", or PERHAPS ACTUALLY SAYING "LISSA" OR "DOCTOR MCKINLEY", since I have been a patient in this cancer center for 14 years. You know, if I feel this way, consider how the unempowered, system-naive new cancer patient must feel in this setting.

Ok, I say all this because when I actually get into a room and interact with the nurses, nurse practitioners, and doctors, I have the best team and absolutely world class care--every time, every year, always.   But the initial interface is often not easy for me.  Anyway, there I am in a room finding out how I'm doing and whether my dose of drug will be lowered a bit to avoid the 2 weeks of mouth sores, and the nurse comes in to tell me that my mother-in-law is in the next room because her blood counts were low after starting radiation therapy for a very difficult, new cancer diagnosis. I finish my visit and walk back out into the waiting room on my way to the treatment side of the cancer center.  Sitting in the waiting room is my mother-in-law looking little and a little lost.  I had been told that  she was ok, but that she would be getting a blood transfusion before going home to help her regain her energy and breath. So, what's the first thing I say to her when I see her in the waiting room?  I say, "Nancy, I'll see you on the other side."  Ok, perhaps the words were ill-chosen, but I just meant the other side of the cancer center!  She says she'll see me there, and  I walk to the treatment side and am put in a room to wait for an IV and a series of infusions.  You never know who will be your room-mate here, but this time, I am put in a room with a lovely woman getting chemo for a new diagnosis of breast cancer.  We're a dime a dozen up here, that's for sure.  We both talk, we both wait, I try not to scare her and I avoid telling her much of my history.  she tells me how much she likes my hair.  I tell her how much I like her scarf, and how exciting it sounds to be almost done with chemo and getting back to her life.  She is lovely, and very much looking forward to getting back to teaching disabled kids in inner-city Cleveland.

So as we wait some more, a lovely nurse I have known for years slips an IV into my vein and starts the first infusion. Then she gets me juice and a cup of soup and ice packs for my hands and feet to help stop the hand/foot symptoms.  She also suggests that I eat ice chips throughout the infusion to help prevent the mouth sores.  All this ice makes for a very chilly several hours!  After the first of the short infusions before the main infusion, I wander the treatment rooms trying to find my mother-in-law.  I find her asleep in a chair in a busy treatment room getting the first of two units of blood.  Again, she looks so little in the big chair.  she awakens and says she is doing ok, but she isn't quite clear about why she needs the blood.  While I'm not either, we talk a little about what the potential causes might be and we agree to meet again in another hour or so.  I wander back to get my final fruit punch-colored infusion and a new room-mate.  This time, two guys come in .  The patient is a man in his 30's with I don't know what cancer, but he's having a terrible side effect of pain in his eyes, and he is unable to look at the light or open one eye.  His brother has accompanied him and sits in the corner and begins to knit.  I recognize that the patient is in significant pain and I don't engage him after saying hello, but I talk some to the knitter.  He is a new knitter, and I am an old one, so we have a language to share anyway.  He is funny and kind, and over time, the patient begins to interject and joke a bit.  I loved watching the brothers kid each other and obviously care about each other.

And now here comes my lovely husband.  He is a physician in this hospital and knows everyone here (unlike me-- a physician in an affiliated hospital).  I try to imagine what he must be dealing with at the moment.  I can really only imagine his pain as he has his mother with a terminal cancer in one room  and his wife getting chemo in another.  How surreal is this situation anyway?  We agree that his mother really is the one who needs his company right now, and I agree to call him when i'm done. And I sit back and think about how completely weird our lives are, and yet how remarkably normal most of the time.  I think this is living at the edge; I certainly feel on the edge sometimes.  Actually, sometimes I think we are standing on one leg, wobbling over the abyss.  Seems to me we have a choice here, or maybe it isn't really a choice at all. We can either figure out how to embrace the situation and move forward,  or we can just fall over.  Not much of a choice, anyway.  I vote for the first option.  From this edgy vantage point, I thank my lucky stars for every single day, and that's not such a bad perspective.to have.  What about a poem or two after this long and rambling note.  I am being just a little lazy and picking two that have winged their way to me over the internet lately.  Enjoy!

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

~ Mary Oliver ~

The Winged Energy of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~