Seven Days: a Lesson in Perspective

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Published by MissMeliss at 1:05 am under Events, Faith, Myth & Story, Family, thematic photographic


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Late last week, Chris and I received some devastating news: his brother-in-law, a man I know to be brilliant, vibrant, kind, and funny, who has been fighting brain cancer for about a year, was given a new prognosis: days to live instead of months. As soon as we heard, we began making plans to head north to Iowa, intending to say goodbye, which we prefer to attending a funeral. (I dislike seeing people I love looking like wax fruit, and prefer to see people when there’s still some there there.)

We’d barely had time to process the news, what with church on Sunday, a Valentine’s Day dinner that had been planned for a while, and various other ordinary distractions, when we received another call, this one early this morning, with even worse news: He’d slipped into a coma, and the estimate was now seven days.

Our car is in the shop, and won’t be ready til Friday, so we can’t really leave any sooner than we originally planned, but this means our plans for a nice vacation to Seattle for our anniversary next month (15 years! Woo!) may have to be scrapped, or at least tabled. I’m not complaining – family comes first, and it’s important that we go, and support Fuzzy’s sister and daughters, and help where we can, and make our own goodbyes.

But I can’t help but think about what seven days can mean.

For a person in a coma, seven days can mean the difference between an easy death, or one full of pain.
It can mean the difference between people holding your hand and saying goodbye, or people visiting your grave.

For an Olympic athlete, it can mean the difference between attempt and success, or the difference between being known in your own community, or throughout the entire world.

For a traveler, it can mean the difference between a room in a friend’s house, a cushy hotel, and their own bed.

For a dog in a shelter, it can be the difference between being a stray, and being rescued, or adoption and euthanasia.

Seven days can be merely a week, or an infinite amount of time. Or both.

Last October, we spent seven days in New York and New Jersey, celebrating a wedding, visiting old friends, reconnecting with family, and exploring old haunts. On Columbus Day, Fuzzy and I visited Fort Hancock, NJ, and climbed the Sandy Hook lighthouse. He took the picture at the top of the post.

Seven days before that, I’d had the flu.
Seven days after, I’d realized how much my New Jersey childhood still informs my being.

Seven days from tonight, we’ll probably be in Iowa.

One Blue Shoe

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It’s weird the things we hold onto, both physically and mentally. On and off today, I’ve been haunted by the image of one blue shoe.

Many years ago, when I was moving from my parents’ house to my first solo apartment, a studio with an amazing wood stove that dominated the room, I ran out of space to hold my as-yet-unpacked boxes. I’d informed my stepfather that the last box would have to wait, but he didn’t listen, and donated the box to charity.

Whatever charity he picked ended up with several dresses, a few pairs of jeans, a really old pair of ice skates (so very useful in San Jose, CA), some books designed to teach adults how to draw, and half a pair of lovely navy pumps with French heels.

Me? I was left holding one blue shoe, and more than a little frustration.

“You told me you didn’t have any more room,” he said in an attempt to defend himself.

“I said I didn’t have room last night. I didn’t tell you to get rid of my stuff.”

“Do you want me to get it back?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, knowing such a request was absurd.

At some point we both laughed, but the really funny part is that it took me years to finally accept the fact that the other half of my pair of shoes was lost forever, and I’d never be able to wear them. Instead, I carried that single shoe with me into the first days of my marriage, into our first rental house, and into the first home that we owned.

It wasn’t until we moved from our condo to our first “real” house, seven years ago, that I finally pitched that shoe. I’m not sure why I kept it, and while it would be fitting to ascribe the act of throwing it away as the final goodbye to childhood, the reality is that I got tired of having a stray shoe among all the matched pairs.

Today, that single shoe has been clopping around my brain, pausing daintily on all sorts of shoe-related miscellany. I suspect it’s there because I was watching a sappy Christmas movie called, “The Christmas Shoes,” last night while lounging in bed. I suspect it will trot away to wherever half-pairs of shoes end up, in a day or so.

In the meanwhile, I’m thinking about how much my life has changed, mostly for the better, since I moved into that tiny apartment. At the time, I was crushing on a guy named Julian, and had just purchased my first computer. A year and a half later, I was living in South Dakota, married to Fuzzy.

Like that year, this year has been full of changes. My main writing gig ends for good at the end of the month, and while I know that will make our finances a bit tight, and finances for others even worse, there’s a part of me that feels oddly free. It’s time for the next phase of my life, and while I have no idea what it will bring I know that if I have to, I can hammer things together with the heel of one blue shoe.

Light One Candle

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At choir practice tonight, we spent so much time on Christmas music, and on a special song we’re doing on the 20th for the first annual child dedication, that our director actually dismissed us early – or rather, she tried. She called us back almost immediately, because we’d forgotten to rehearse for this Sunday, when we’re actually doing a Hanukkah songs.

One of the songs we’re doing is a special favorite of mine: “Light One Candle.” It’s a Peter, Paul & Mary song, written by Peter himself, and it combines generic Hanukkah themes with social justice themes, thereby making it a perfect pick for a UU choir. I don’t even mind that we’re singing it “straight” instead of like the kicky folk song it really is, because I like the song so much.

The actual lyrics aside, I’m a fan of the song because it mentions candles, and I’m a big fan of the wick and the wax. I like the way candlelight softens the lines of any room so lit, and the lines of any face gazing into the flames. I like the way a single candle in a window can be a beacon of hope, or a sign of welcome.

Candles can be romantic, decorative, or simply functional. They illuminate dining tables, fireplace mantles and sumptuous baths. They can be scented, or smell simply of wax and smoke.

In all cases, however, candles make the mundane a bit more magical.

Take a moment sometime in the next few days, to put the holiday chaos aside. Light a candle, brew some tea, curl up in a comfortable chair near a crackling fire, and just let the flickering flame warm you, heart, soul, and mind.

Chosen Families

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Most of us are familiar with the standard definition of “family,” that of parents and children living together. There is, however, an alternate definition of family: a group of people who are generally not blood relations but who share common attitudes, interests, or goals and, frequently, live together

In my life, I am privileged, even blessed, to have two families.

The first is my biological one. At its nucleus is the duo formed by my mother and myself – we who had a Gilmore Girls-esque relationship long before the Gilmore girls were created. It extends from there: my stepfather, and his son, my aunts, and their spouses and children, my cousins who less directly related. We don’t always like each other as much as we ought, but always, we love each other, and when we’re together there is conversation, reminiscence, laughter, and copious amounts of coffee.

My second family is my chosen family, and it’s gone through various stages. I had such a family of close friends in California, but even though they were – indeed are wonderful, talented, smart people, I never really fit in. When we moved to Texas, five years ago, I drifted for a while – made some friends, let them slip away – as one does in a new place. We tried to find a chosen family at a local Episcopal church, and while those people were warm and welcoming, again, I didn’t really blend.

A bit over a year ago, while Fuzzy was in Hong Kong, I found the second family I always wanted. They, too, were centered in a church community, but this time the church was Unitarian Universalist, the politics liberal, the minds brilliant, and, like my biological family, copious amounts of coffee are a crucial part of their being. It took me a few months to be completely at ease, but from the first moment I met them, I knew I’d come home.

My first family is my blood family, though they are all in my heart. My second family is one strictly of the heart, and while the two groups mix at times, I’m fine with them being largely separate, because it means I’m surrounded by a depth of caring and kinship that most people never get to experience.

I may never be rich, and I may never be famous, but that’s okay, because I have two families, and that’s a double blessing that can never be matched.

Surprising Beauty

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The lamp is burning low upon my table top.
The snow is softly falling.
The air is still within the silence of my room.
I hear your voice softly calling.
If I could only have you near to breathe a sigh or two,
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love on this winter night with you.

A couple of weeks ago in church, I was struck by the beauty of one of our elders. She is not a conventional beauty. Her curly hair is graying, her face a tangle of fine lines and wrinkles, and her hands showing her age in similar fashion, but her eyes are bright, her mind as alert as ever. In the moment, however, she was as beautiful to me, with her fierce love of this church community mixed with a kind of innate graciousness that cannot be taught, but that some women are apparently born with, as any Hollywood starlet ever could be.

The faint tones of an east coast youth color this woman’s voice, and even though she is nothing like my grandmother in appearance, I felt my grandmother hovering softly by me as she spoke, and had to close my eyes and accept the feeling of being watched over before I could return to being completely present in the moment.

I cannot capture with mere words the apparent softness of her cheek, or the way her hand gripped the microphone with such surety. My grandmother’s hands, though gnarled at the end, were just as sure every time she brushed away my tears, wrapped my hand in hers, or gripped her own communication device: a wooden spoon.

This moment was just another assurance from the universe that I’m where I’m supposed to be right now, and it came when I wasn’t looking for it, in a splash of surprising beauty followed by the still, cool pool of inner peace, and while it faded rapidly, as such moments tend to do, I treasure its resonance and carry it in my heart.

The fire is dying now. My lamp is growing dim.
The shades of night are lifting.
The morning light steals across my windowpane,
where webs of snow are drifting
If I could only have you near to breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love, and to be once again with with you.

*Lyrics taken from “Song for a Winter’s Night” by Sarah McLachlan.

holidailies 2009

In Memoriam: Zorro (1995 – 2009)

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colorblock-comforter
My stepfather found Zorro wandering the streets of San Jose during a violent rainstorm. He was skinny, starving, dirty, and covered in fleas. He called me from the car, “I found a dog like Abigail. I’m bringing him to you.”

Zorro was, of course, nothing like my parents’ neurotic virgin ice princess chihuahua. He was plucky, gregarious, gallant, and warm. The first day we met, he curled up in my lap and fell asleep. Within 24 hours he was following me wherever I went.

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He was never much into toys, but when we first got him, he liked to have things. He would steal chopsticks, shoes, balls, paperclips, and hoard them. He used to steal potstickers, too, and hide them in plain sight on the food of our bed, after digging a “hole,” of course. He was very proud of his accomplishment. This was before Miss Cleo joined the family.

About six months after we adopted him, Zorro began showing signs of epilepsy. It began with one seizure, increased gradually to the point where he would have clusters of seizures every other Monday, in which he would go from Grand Mal to Grand Mal, never really regaining himself. The vets said we should consider putting him down, we said there had to be another way. Using a combination of traditional drug therapy, acupuncture and Chinese herbs, we helped Zorro beat epilepsy. His last seizure was sometime before Labor Day, 2002.

When we moved to Texas, Zorro adjusted well. Ice and snow were new experiences for him, and he would often give us the patented Slitty-Eyed Look of Doom before going out, but he coped, and when he came back in there were always warm towels and cuddles.

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A couple of years ago, we came home from a trip to South Dakota, and when we picked Zorro up from the kennel, we were told he had a heart murmur. He was put on enalapril, and that kept him stable for about four months.

In February, 2008, we were told his heard murmur had progressed to a stage six, of six stages, and lasix was added to his medicines. His heart was enlarged and was pressing on his trachea, but he didn’t act sick, and was coping.

Last Halloween, we woke up to find Zorro refusing food (shocking for him) and with his pulse visible as a tremor in his entire body. We rushed him to the vet, and were given an antibiotic, and vetmedin. Within 24 hours he was his bouncy perky self, though his cough was a little worse. We were cautioned at that time, “One morning you will wake up and he will not. Or you’ll have to make a decision that his fight is over. Hope for the first.”

Last Tuesday, we noticed Zorro having trouble chewing, and on Wednesday saw the signs of an abscessed tooth (swelling under the eye). We made an appointment for an exam, and a dental if needed, and got him an antibiotic. On Thursday, he saw the dentists, who said there was no tooth to pull, and felt that with Zorro’s heart condition, the best course of action would be to leave him on the antibiotic. When he came home, the abscess began to drain.

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On Saturday morning, Zorro refused food, but took his meds. On Saturday evening he took the meds, and ate, but had to be coaxed. His breathing was labored, but we knew he was on an antibiotic, and he’d bounced back from conditions that seemed worse.

On Sunday afternoon, we came home from seeing a movie (Coraline) happy that our foster dog, Blue, had been adopted. Zorro came to greet us, but didn’t jump, just walked slowly. We petted him and soothed him, and tried to get him to take the meds he’d refused in the morning, but he kept turning his head away. We kept trying every couple of hours.

Around six, I emailed a friend and asked her for a reference for an emergency vet, because I noticed blood in Zorro’s spittle, and because he was panicking if either of us left the room (not normal for him). In the car, I tried bribing him, “Make it through this,” I said, “and you can have all the French fries you want.” We took him to the clinic and they put him on oxygen and injected lasix. They talked to us about what our options were, and said their preference was to keep him over night. They left us alone to discuss what WE wanted, and we’d just come to the decision that we would NOT leave him, when they rushed back in, “He’s crashing,” they said, “We need you to be with him.”

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They were holding him so that his airway was clear, and blood was pouring from his throat. They asked if we wanted them to perform CPR as his heart was not beating regularly. We said, “No. Just make sure he doesn’t hurt.”

We were gently ushered around the operating table where they laid him in a warmed receiving blanket. We touched his paws and scratched behind his ears and told him we loved him, so the last thing he saw was us. He didn’t struggle, and didn’t seem to be in any pain.

They left us with him for a few minutes, and offered to let us take his body back in the exam room but it was too hard to be near him without any of his vibrance left. (I have this issues with human deaths too, and avoid open-casket funerals because I don’t like seeing people I love looking like wax fruit.) Later, they asked if we wanted to bury him, or wanted him cremated. We chose the latter, and his ashes will be returned to us later this week.

Zorro went to the Rainbow Bridge at 8:46 PM CST, on Sunday, February 22nd. He was loved, and he will be missed. Chris and I extend our sincere thanks to the folks at Parkway Animal Hospital and the Airport Freeway Animal Emergency Clinic, as well as to all of our friends to tweeted, texted, emailed, and called to express their support during the last day. Please be patient with us as we grieve…Zorro was like our child.

Zorro in 1998
Zorro in 1998

UnMagical

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A 2008 Best of Holidailies Selection. Thanks, Holidailies Reviewers!

Just as plastic trees become objects of wonder just as they’re bedecked with fairy lights and ornaments, Christmas decorations, in general, become unmagical as soon as the Christmas season is over.

For some, this change happens around the 6th of January – Epiphany, the 12th Day of Christmas. For others – me included – it happens between 11:59 PM on New Year’s Eve, and the first light of New Year’s Day.

Like a tired party girl dragging herself home after a late night, make-up smeared, stockings in runs, shoes with impossibly high heels carried in one hand rather than being worn, decorations left up on New Year’s Day seem somehow cheap and tawdry.

Oh, the silver and gold are just as shiny as ever, but once the season passes, the shine becomes tacky, rather than tasteful. The bright reds and greens seem overdone, somehow, and the scent of pine and gingerbread becomes cloying.

While I’ve been ready to move beyond Christmas for several days now – despite my love of the season – I’ve resisted, because I know all too well how little time we get to enjoy the Yuletide magic every year. I will miss red and green candles, but I’m looking forward to the freshness of cream and pale gold tones. In my head, I catch whiffs of pear and vanilla, two of the “clean” scents that mean the new year to me.

Tonight, I will put on party clothes and drink to health and prosperity; tomorrow, I will box away my Christmas treasures for another year, in clean white tissue. When I am done, the house will feel too big for a few days, but then things will settle, and I will enjoy brisk mornings with oatmeal and coffee, and chilly evenings with stews and rented DVDs – the pleasures of winter without the stress of the holidays are so restful.

To those of you who are going out tonight, please be careful. Have fun, just be judicious about it. To those of you staying in, enjoy the comfort of home. To everyone reading this: May you have a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Solitary

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We visit others as a matter of social obligation. How long has it been since we have visited with ourselves?
~Morris Adler

This week I’ve been feeling insular, and basking in not-quite-solitude. I say “not-quite” because Fuzzy has been in the house, but mainly keeping to himself, in his office. I, on the other hand, have spent far too much time in bed, as it’s the only place I can comfortably support my knee, and still have easy access to the bathroom, internet, and television (though I’ve mainly been watching DVDs).

After the loss of the clippy thing for my ACE wrap, I tried walking without any support today. Bad idea. I tripped over the dogs more than once, slipped on the wet tile in the bathroom, and re-wrenched everything, resulting in the swallowing of vicodin (left over from a recent root-canal) and a return to bed. I slept a lot today, and wrote some, and read some lovely comforting TNG fanfic. It’s a series I’ve read before but that I really like.

I was invited to hang out with a friend, and part of me really wanted to, but the sensible part of my brain kicked in and realized I was really not fit to be in public. I’ve been whiny and grumpy – things I don’t like being – and just too tired to engage even in the most basic conversation.

The thing is…I quite like solitude. Oh, people are great, but I have a great need for significant amounts of alone-time. If I wasn’t in pain, I’d probably still be playing hermit this week, I’d just be more cheerful and more productive.

Maybe it’s because I’m an only child, or maybe it’s because for much of my life I was the only kid surrounded by adults, but I’m perfectly content inside my own head. I think that’s why I write – if I didn’t, I’d be schizophrenic – there are so many voices inside my brain, but I turn them all into characters and observations.

The same friend suggested yesterday (I think) that I should go do some people-watching, to break myself out of myself, and I responded that in my current mood people would merely piss me off. That wasn’t quite true, just the only way I could voice it. It would be more accurate to say that I was feeling the need to be insular, and that any people encountered would have felt overwhelming.

I don’t slip into this hermitish mood very often – at least, not this far into it – but when I do, it never lasts longer than a week.

Tomorrow is day three. We have plans in the evening. I hope I can find the energy to be sociable. I think prospects are good.

As Easy as Learning to Fly

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has much to say on the subject of flight.

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, the book suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.

That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

I haven’t attempted flight in the past few days, but I have managed to re-injure a knee I twisted while boarding an America West plane several years ago. It’s not a bump, but a lateral stability issue – I can be walking in a straight line, and suddenly my right knee will decide it feels like turning. I am, therefore, trying to keep it elevated and wrapped, and not to make any twisting motions, which only exacerbate the issue. Have you ever tried doing dishes without twisting a bit? It feels ridiculous to have to actually, consciously, take steps to travel the two feet from sink to dishwasher, and yet, if I don’t, there is a crunchy sound and a flood of hot pain.

One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people’s failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.

If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinty, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.

The thing about ACE bandages is that they are rendered useless if you lose the little clippy thing. You know the one I mean: It’s a small bit of elastic with grabby metal teeth on either end. As if re-injuring a knee in my sleep (oh, did I not mention that bit?) isn’t talent enough for you, I managed, during a two hour nap yesterday, to lose the clippy thing.

It was on the bandage, holding it in place when I got into the bed around 3:30 PM, no longer able to remain vertical. When I was awakened by hungry dogs playing kissy-face and sitting on my hair, the bandage was no longer fastened.

But wait, there’s more!

The clippy thing had disappeared.

Fuzzy and I searched the bed, the floor around the bed, and the pajamas I’d been wearing in the bed, as well as the dog’s fur, and the path from bedroom to kitchen (and back) (because I’d limped across the house to let said dogs out just as I was preparing to nap. We even went over the entire length of the ACE wrap, just in case it was still attached.

Nothing. Nada. It’s as if there is a tiny wormhole somewhere at the foot of my bed that is designed solely to eat the clippy things that come with ACE wraps.

This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration. Bob and float, float and bob. Ignore all consideration of your own weight simply let yourself waft higher. Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful. They are most likely to say something along the lines of “Good God, you can’t possibly be flying!” It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.

Waft higher and higher. Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly.

DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY.

Speaking of wormholes, there is apparently a second one in my room, inside my nightstand, because while we were looking for the Mysterious Disappearing Clippy Thing (TM), I found – and I am not exaggerating this number – seventeen contour clips, the sort of elongated metal hair clips that are horrendously ugly but do a great job. You see them a lot in the hair of gymnasts and figure skaters (of which I am neither), and, I didn’t think I even owned more than ten of them.

But evidently I do.

What I do not own, at least, not any longer, is a partly eaten bag of chocolate cherry kisses, but this is my own fault. No, I did NOT eat the entire bag. I stupidly left it on the Nightstand of Doom, forgot it was there, went with Fuzzy to fetch dinner last night (because the roast I’d taken out was steadfastly refusing to defrost), and came home to find a trail of red tin foil scattered from nightstand to garage door.

The dogs are showing no adverse effects.
I hope they liked their little treat.

When you have done this a few times you will find the moment of distraction rapidly easier and easier to achieve.

You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your flight, your speed, your maneuverability, and the trick usually lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do, but just allowing it to happen as if it were going to anyway.

You will also learn about how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly screw up, and screw up badly, on your first attempt.

There are private clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments. Few genuine hitchhikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them.

I’m caught wondering if the wormholes work in reverse. For example, if I make an offering of a contour clip (or twelve) at the foot of the bed, will I wake up from a nap to find seventeen ACE bandage clippy things on my nightstand?

I don’t even need seventeen.

One will do.

And really, how difficult can it be to appease the gods of small shiny objects?

What? What’s that?
Oh.

It’s as easy as learning to fly.

*Quoted passages taken from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

Concerto for Double Bass, by John Fuller

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He is a drunk leaning companionably
Around a lamp post or doing up
With intermittent concentration
Another drunk’s coat.

He is a polite but devoted Valentino,
Cheek to cheek, forgetting the next step.
He is feeling the pulse of the fat lady
Or cutting her in half.

But close your eyes and it is sunset
At the edge of the world. It is the language
Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots,
The heart-beat slowing down.
~ John Fuller

John Fuller is one of my favorite poets. I post his piece “Valentine” almost every year for Valentine’s Day. This one struck me tonight, and I thought I’d share it.