Beautiful

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful
The buzz of her head after a dizzying conversation
Beautiful
The alien that possesses him when he says: “How are you, Mama?”
Beautiful
The source of justice flowing through her veins
Beautiful
The burn deep in her chest that calms at times, but stays
Beautiful
The ween that takes place when she stops suckling the pain
Beautiful
The banks on either side of the road providing guidance, but tempting a climb
Beautiful
The buzzing journey toward an alien source burning to ween her away from any ideas of not scaling the banks
Beautiful
Her hands on my back pushing the discomfort out; deeper, breathe deeper, push deeper, feel deeper
Beautiful
Tiny, wrinkled paws in her tummy, stretching, pushing, ready to grasp her anxious thumb; the date has been set little guy, get ready for the squeeze of a lifetime, your mama’s pretty excited to hold you
Beautiful
Nose a bit too big, teeth a bit too spaced, cadence a bit too slow, skin a bit too dark
Beautiful
Bent over, tired, really tired, 86 years of tired, pushing the impersonal metal cart, too many choices, too few dreams left
Beautiful

Jordan’s Butterfly

Tony proudly wore to work the butterfly that Jordan made or him.

She told him:
“Here’s a butterfly for you to wear today so every time you see it, you’ll think of me and how much I love you.”

She’s a pretty special little girl and maybe one day she’ll realize how fortunate she is to have someone so proud to wear her paper butterfly.

A Small Request

OK, sweetie, it’s time for you to get out of my head now.
I really do have a lot of work to do
And as much as my heart loves swirling
With your hair tangled in my fingers thoughts
And your words as little clouds, puffy-soft,
throughout the skyscape of my head,
Drifting carelessly, but endlessly;
My sky needs to clear a little bit, ok?

River Cleanse

River

The river flowed through her,
picked up from the banks,
with the current busting a hole into the top of her head.
The steady pressure that pushes 30 year old trees out of their securely rooted nests and carries them as matchsticks
pushed through her body ,
trickling out of the eyes as freshwater tears and dislodging crusted mucus from the sinus
nettie-pot style.
The mouth served as the shocked spigot
before the overflow continued on through the organs,
washing off the layers of insulation and defenses and any little cells that were reproducing too quickly.
Some of the pressure was relieved by the fingers
each one a tributary eventually streaming
with mucky liquid that ran clear after the first couple of minutes.
As the bulk of the water flushed past the tummy and intestines,
she began to think of flying and touching clouds
and friends and teachers
and friends that are teachers that make her dream at least once a week.
And the river flowed and cleansed every time a man or woman used or utilized her
(’cause it’s important to know that there’s a difference).
That accumulated waste couldn’t come out of her yoni
-that had been dammed for years-
but instead made its way through suggestion and direction
to the feet standing solid on a wave
bursting the rejection of the soul through the soles
and back to the source to continue the process with the earth.
And it all started with a word.

*From Miriam’s Contemplative writing class tonight.  The prompt was to start with the word “word”, make an association tree from there and then write using those words or ideas (or write about something else).*

Oh, nevermind…

(Journal entry from Jun 2008 while at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival)

On a hike up the mountain to the waterfall overlooking Telluride:
One woman was talking about getting a baseline mammogram because she’s turning 40. Another woman was questioning that and saying that she wasn’t sure the baseline or subsequent check-ups were necessary since the procedure would introduce x-rays to the body. I said that the effect wouldn’t be that great since the follow-ups weren’t every year and the amount of x-rays were minor compared to the possibility of breast cancer.

She shot back “Yeah, but you’re a scientist, right? And you work in pharmaceuticals.” I replied that just because I work in the industry doesn’t mean that I automatically support taking drugs or subjecting the body to all treatments. In fact, I don’t unless it’s something critical and my body just isn’t dealing well with whatever has been thrown my way.

That’s when I should have stopped.

Vast Expanse

   

*Don’t ruin the idea with words.
~I’ve missed you…almost forgot you really.
*Every morning you woke me up. Well, actually, I was awake and waiting for you. After the stroke, I HAD to wait for you, Sunshine.
~And every morning, that’s how you greeted me: “Good morning, Sunshine”. I always teased you about saying that to the other girls.
*But I didn’t. Only for you.
~Thank-you for believing in me. In your eyes, I saw my beauty; my humanity. I wish we could have our talks again. I would ask a lot more questions.
*You moved so fast. Think you could slow down to ask? Or listen?
~I don’t know.

Even when we were together every day, there was a distance, a gap. Now years later I’d like to say that I would be more intentional, more careful, but in most of my interactions, there’s the comfortable separation. Sometimes now I wonder how far away you really are. Maybe you are closer than ever because I can make our relationship into what I want and you’ll never push beyond my comfortable perimeter.

At that point in my marriage, I had been stripped of any belief that I could have in myself. When you held my face in your hands and showed me that I mattered, you gave pieces of it back.

*If my memory of our relationship is different than history, at this point, does it matter? If no one else is alive to correct the fabricated details, are they less real?*

A Week in the Life

 

Concerned Other

My evenings this week:

Monday: Rainbow Board Meeting with Mandi (and others) to talk about how to replace one of the most valuable employees.

Tuesday: Played my role as “Concerned Other” for a friend who has to attend a class after his 2nd DWI.  The people in the class had to present their plans for not letting another drunk driving incident happen again.  I had a lot of doodle time.  Some quotes from the class:
“It’s not behind me, but in front of me.” 
“I need to remember that I’m a good, kind, caring person.  I tend not to do that.”
“We all have our crutches.”
Some common themes: loneliness, low self-esteem, depression 

Wednesday: With a couple of other women, helped plant a friend’s garden.  Later I touched on a wound that opened itself back up in contemplative writing class.   I was reminded once again of how fortunate I am to meet weekly with such a supportive, genuine group of beautiful women and get the opportunity to probe a bit deeper.

Billy Joel/Elton John

Thursday: Checked IDs for a bunch of people (who had enough wrinkles or grey hair to not need IDs checked) as a volunteer for the Billy Joel/Elton John concert and got to watch most of the concert for free. Incredible!!!
Favorite moment: They sang the last song, Piano Man, together with the whole sold-out crowd singing along.  At the end of the song they stopped and WE sang to them:
“Sing us a song, you’re a piano man
sing us a song tonight
Cause we’re all in the mood for a melody
and you’ve got us feelin’ all right.”

Friday-Sunday: Packed up for a weekend camping trip with Andy and his scout troop.  Predictions are hiking and biking in the rain.  
My Mother’s Day gift: my son stuck on a camping trip with me.

Monday: Pass-out!

Memory

  

 

 

She keeps because she forgets.
The things are the memories:
each note a conversation,
each object a piece of time. 

She used to say it was for her son -
and his children- 
but it’s not.
He doesn’t need her memories.

She keeps the pieces because
otherwise those slices of existence
disappear
as though they never happened.

And someday that might matter.
Someday the pieces might fit
and finally make sense.

The Cancer Story

Relay for Life: Madison, WI

I wrote the following to a friend a few years ago when I was going in for my annual oncology check-up. He asked:
“What kinds of results are you expecting? (As in, is it a binary yes/no thing, or more fuzzy than that?)”

Here’s my response:

I think it’s more of a “growth/no growth” thing.
I’m not really worried about it. The annual check-up is just a reminder of what happened, it’s not a time of much anxiety for me though. I have one of the best ob/gyn oncologists in the country…and one of the best ob/gyns, too. They play golf together & are good friends. Because of that & the way I was treated, I have never felt like a number. I’ve always felt that both doctors have a genuine concern for my health. I think my oncologist likes when I come in because my case is easy & very positive. He told me when it happened that the cancer I had was very slow growing, which is why I don’t have to worry about chemo…it won’t work. He said if anything does come back, I would just have surgery again. But he also said he’s very optimistic that it won’t. The source is gone (the ovaries) and he
used laser on as much of the inner abdominal surface as he could to kill anything that didn’t belong.

Here’s the cancer story:
I knew I didn’t want to give birth to any more kids. (I don’t have a
problem with adoption, just didn’t want to bring another kid into the
world myself.) So I went in to get a tubal ligation. In the process, I
had an abnormal PAP. The Dr did tests and couldn’t find the cause, but said he’d look around when he went to do the tubal. He kept telling me “You know this is permanent, right?” (I thought that was funny later, because a tubal is a lot less permanent that getting everything taken out.) So during the surgery, he found two growths; one on the ovary & the other on the abdominal wall. He called my oncologist into the surgery room and he was able to assess it right away, so he knew what we were dealing with.
My Dr called the next day to tell me & had already set up an appointment for me with the oncologist. This was in June/July. I had the surgery end of Aug/early Sep. It all went really well. I went for check-ups a lot, and now just go once a year to the ob/gyn & once a year to get a CT scan & see the oncologist. The only long term impact on my body is that I have to take estrogen replacement, and get a lot of calcium and, well, the orgasms aren’t quite the same.

Here’s some of the good that came out of it:
*My mom & I became very close. We’ve had ups & downs, but she was really there for me during the whole thing.
She drove 1 1/2 hours up for my appointments and came to see me every day I was in the hospital. She took Andy for a week while I was in the hospital. She was just completely supportive. It gave her a chance to make up for times that she wasn’t there for me in the past & let me feel her love me through her actions.
*Andy & I got closer. He took care of me the first week I came home & wouldn’t leave the house. Finally, at the end of the week, I told him he HAD to go play with a friend. That I’d be OK. I tried not to use the cancer word around him because I know it’s so loaded, but he eventually heard it & I just explained to him that I had bad cells in me that needed to come out. He was actually sort of relieved about the whole thing because he didn’t want me to have another kid & when he realized that I couldn’t, he was more ok with things.
*It was one of the steps in the process that brought my dad & I together.
*I’m a statistical plus on the side of people surviving cancer & moving on with life…and we need more numbers on this side.
*I also take better care of my body.

The only time I really broke down:
I had been handling things pretty well & just going from appointment to appointment and doing what I was told & taking it all in stride. BUT the day before my surgery, I had a phone call from the oncologist office. I had had a chest exam to make sure that my heart & lungs were ok for the surgery. The nurse was calling to say the x-ray showed my heart to be abnormal. I lost it. I thought, 2 months ago I was fine. Now I have cancer AND my heart is fucked up??? So I had to go to the cardiology center to get all this work done. As I sat there, all the people were really old and everything just hit me. I couldn’t believe something could be wrong with my heart, but it made the cancer seem really insignificant.
That was what I needed out of that experience…to be reminded that things could be worse. It turns out that after extensive tests that day, my heart is very healthy.

My favorite moment:
The day I was to be discharged and we were waiting for the Dr to sign off, my mom had brought Andy up to see me. The nurse said it would be a few hours and I told my mom she could leave, but she said she wanted to stick around. So, Andy curled up next to me on the bed, under my arm, and my mom was sitting right next to me in a chair and Andy & I slept for a couple of hours and my mom just sat there with us. I’m not sure why that moment is so significant to me, but typing it makes me tear up. When I woke up, I just felt this overwhelming love of mother to child: my mom to me and me to Andy.

I don’t see myself as a cancer survivor or anything that dramatic. It’s just something I’ve gone through. But it was one of the significant events in my life. We all have them and they just shape who we are.

*********
16-Jul-2008 Update:
Last year at about this time, I had my 5-year check-up. The results were good and I was given the blessing to proceed without coming back. I still take Estradiol 0.5mg/day (when I remember) but otherwise don’t have much of a physical effect from the experience.
I’m very fortunate. I know that.

I’m posting this now in memory of Wanda Jo, who wasn’t as fortunate, and for DH. Thanks for sharing and elegantly expressing some of the deeper feelings I also had experienced.

Heading west

Paul

It’s a pilgrimage to my mecca. The annual trip to Colorado.

I go for the mountains and old friends and music.
But mostly, I go for Jill (the cake) and Paul (the icing).

I would like to pay an homage to each, but only have 2 hours to pack and clean before heading out. We pick our friends because they reflect something within ourselves.

Jill reflects the best of what I would like to see in myself, while still being real enough to accept a flaw here or there. Sometimes I don’t feel that I know her at all after all of these years…I’ll learn some fact or preference and be completely surprised…but in a deeper sense we are very connected and just understand each other. Maybe this is it: We both have (different) ideals of who we would like to be and what we want to represent, but we both know and accept that we fall short of that in our humanity and accept that in ourselves and each other. There’s even a beauty in it. I don’t know: I just admire and love her and am so thankful she stills puts up with my imperfections and constant chiseling to catch peeks into and through her outer shell

Paul helps me see the geeky, sincere, intelligent parts buried deep within myself. And he reminds me of how much I love to discover things about life and the excitement that breaks through when I discover a new person, place or idea. At the same time, I get nudged to accept and embrace my little social faux pas when bursting with the newness. Paul gets excited…no, he gets giddy…and I let his joy ooze into my pores. His marriage represents the possibility in what seems so impossible on the outside and keeping doors open that may seem closed. Paul says that he’s “been jonesing’ for the dayna”.
Your hug is on its way, Paul!

(And then there’s Janene who’s living in a teepee with a cell phone and computer. And Matt, Jill’s husband and father of her bun-in-the-oven, who wakes me up with Rocky Mountain High and cooks us all egg burritos for breakfast, is really the best host I have ever met and has almost as much energy as Jill. And Duck, who is going to Festival with us. And Sarah and Chris and Marcus, former co-workers who also moved west and settled. And I won’t even start on all of Matt & Jill’s friends I have met over the years.)

I haven’t even gotten to the mountains and the music. Maybe I’ll cover those when I get back. IF I come back….there’s a nanny position opening up in Golden in a few months. ;o)