Traveling ~ by Jay

I have finally, finally caught up on my paperwork.

Phew.

Just in time to scramble around for Eve's birthday party tomorrow, and then to pack. I head off in the wee hours on Saturday for a one-week conference - limited internet access, but unlimited access to some of my favorite people, so probably no blogging. I'd hoped to have a lovely little reflection on my first decade as a parent, but instead, there's this.

Twice this week I've managed to leave work twice during daylight. Saturday is Tu b'Shevat, the New Year of the Trees. By the time I get home from the conference, it will be February, that much closer to spring. Pitchers and catchers report in three weeks.

Stay warm and dry and out of the wind while I'm gone, and be at peace.

Conversations With My Daughter ~ by Jay

Today is like it was on my actual birthday.

Because it's snowing?

Yes.

It didn't snow on the day you were born, sweetie. It was the day we met you - the day after you were born. That day, there was a blizzard.

So I spent a whole day with my real mother?

Who?

My real mother. A whole day, before you came and got me.

Conversations with My Husband ~ by Jay

Good think I'm getting my hair cut today. It's all over the place.

You look like one of those little dolls with all the hair sticking straight up.

A troll? Sam, did you just tell me I look like a troll?

Well, one of the really cute little ones.

Keep digging, dear. You're not out of that hole quite yet.

Things I Could Do Without ~ by Jay

Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Things I could not do without: NARAL

Those Were The Days ~ by Jay

Resonance ~ by Jay

Sometimes when I'm in a drum circle, I'll stop playing and just keep my hand still on the surface of my drum. I can feel the skin vibrate under my fingers in time with the other players.

Resonance.

I understand the physics - waves, sound, air pressure - but that's not what I'm thinking. At that moment I am lifted out of myself and drawn into communion with a larger oneness. When I lift my hand to play again, my rhythm is shifted, my pulse slowed, and I move seamlessly into the groove.

Resonance.

Last week I sat in a hospice room, as I often do. There was the patient, lying in the bed, his breathing audible. But instead of a stethoscope, I held a frame drum, and I picked up my stick and softly, slowly, played what I felt.

Resonance.

My friend led us through three cycles of drumming, the patterns shifting and weaving together. My patient lay still through it all, his breathing slower and calmer, entrained with our drums. She placed lavender oil on his energy points - counterpoint and complement to the sacred oil the priest had used earlier that day - and again picked up her drum.

Resonance.

It is her father in that bed; it is my father in that bed; it is all of us, breathing and drumming together, inhaling the lavender, exhaling the sacrament. I am the drummer, and the doctor, and the friend, and the daughter.

Resonance.

Letter From My Daughter ~ by Jay

Dear Mommy and Daddy,

You are the best parents in the whole word. I am not sad because of you, but I am sad. The only thing that will make me feel better is the iText Messenger from Justice. You could make me really, really happy if I found it on the table in the morning (hint, hint). You could do that for me, since you love me, and I am the daughter you always wanted and now you have.

love,

Eve, Your Daughter

Conversations With My Daughter ~ by Jay

We saw a movie about civil rights today.

Oh?

Did you know that they used fire hoses on the people who were marching?

Yes, I did know that.

That looked scary.

I'm sure it was. It was a very difficult time.

Mommy, if I lived back then, would I be black or would I be white?

Gifts ~ by Jay

Does this mean the cancer is getting better?

I'm afraid not. The cancer is still there, but the pain and nausea have improved so you can eat again.

They told me I would die within days after I got home.

I know. If I'd seen you in the hospital, I would have said the same thing. We never can tell for sure.

But I'm not getting better.

No, the cancer itself is not getting better. You feel better, and that's wonderful. You'll have a chance to enjoy some food and spend some time with your family.

Well, this is a gift, then. It's a gift from God that I have this time. I want to use it well, and I want to eat ice cream.

______

Last night Dad and I sat with Mom and we told her it was OK. I promised her I'd take care of Dad, and we told her that when she was ready, she could just close her eyes and go.

That must have been very difficult.

It was, but we can't watch her suffer any more.

This is as hard as it gets in life, letting someone go before we're ready - and we're never ready. You've given her a great gift.

Having her in my life has been a gift. As difficult as this is, I know I'm lucky to have had both my parents for 60 years. That's a gift from God, and I'm grateful.

Shifting Focus ~ by Jay

My mother's been ill.

This should not be a big deal. Mom's basically healthy - she has some back pain and some joint issues, but she copes pretty well. It's January and she's had a cough and a fever for a week or so. Didn't really get better with antibiotics. Had a chest X-ray which was normal, had her meds changed, ignored everyone's advice to stay home and stay in bed and is getting better anyway.

This happened a year or so ago and when Mom called for reassurance, I said the appropriate soothing things, hung up and forgot about it. This time I said soothing things to her and then went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night wondering how many pack-years did she smoke, really, before she quit? And how long has she been coughing? Did she look too thin the last time I saw her? What's really causing that back pain? Should I push her PCP to check a CT of the chest?

For a while I thought there must be something different about this illness, something my subconscious was picking up that I was missing. The other day I sat down and really thought about it and realized no, there isn't anything different about Mom - she has a viral bronchitis and probably mild chronic lung disease and she'll get better. What changed since last time is me.

Last time I was practicing primary care. Lots of my patients had coughs and fevers. They got better, pretty much no matter what I did. I could make them more comfortable, but I didn't change the outcome. That's still true - I can make my patients more comfortable, but I can't change their outcome - except that now the outcome is that they're all dying. Every coughing person I see now has lung cancer or end-stage chronic lung disease or pneumonia brought on by leukemia or severe congestive heart failure.

My mother hasn't changed, but I've gone from spending all day with basically healthy people to walking through the valley of death. I need to adjust my perspective when I surface into the real world.

Things I Could Do Without ~ by Jay

This. Still? Really?





Girls are nurses. Boys are doctors.

Pardon me while I go bang my head against this brick wall for a while.

Word To Give Up ~ by Jay

While I was thinking about my word for the year, I realized there's a word I want to stop using this year.

I'm just....

If you would only just....

We can just....

It will just take....

No. Not any more.

I am....

If you could....

We can....

It will take....

No trivializing. No minimizing. No downplaying my own needs and contributions.

That's all. Just that one thing.

Well, it may take a while.

Palliative Care Grand Rounds ~ by Jay

Palliative Care Grand Rounds is up at PalliMed. Go over and take a look - lots of great stuff (and I'd say that even if they hadn't included one of my posts).

At Arm's Length ~ by Jay

Back when Sam and I were struggling, I was quite sure I knew what the problem was. Sam. Sam wasn't comfortable with intimacy. Sam was an introvert who couldn't tolerate social contact. Sam needed to keep me at a distance because he couldn't cope with closeness. Eventually, we worked through some things and I felt we were closer together, and it was fine. Not as close as I'd like, but certainly as close as Sam could manage. I was very proud of myself for forging such a wonderful compromise, and accepting him for what he was, even if that meant giving up some of the intimacy I'd wanted. That (kind of smug) pride radiates from the I/E post I linked to, and now it makes me wince, because it's not that simple. Of course it's not that simple.

When John and I started corresponding in September, we had a lot of blanks to fill in. We'd been out of touch completely for 25 years, and out of each other's daily lives for 30. So I told him about the years Sam and I lived apart. I also told him about the relationship in between, and we reminisced about our own days together - except they weren't really together. John and I met when I was 13 and he was 15. He asked me out a year later, and kept asking until I finally said "yes", right before he was about to graduate. The two years we dated he was in college, living at home, and I was in my last two years of high school. John worked part-time and I had yearbook and theater and lots of other extracurriculars. We had an occasional stolen visit on weekday afternoons and regular Friday and Saturday night dates, but we usually didn't even talk to each other during the week.

Hmm. Together but not really together. That sounded familiar. And that relationship in between? That was the guy who went to college in Big City, an hour away from my school. I saw him on the weekends and over vacations. Hmm. And that was my choice, too - I invited him to my high school senior prom, and I already knew where I was going to college.

And then there's Sam, who chose to go to grad school 3,000 miles away from me. Sam, who lived in my dorm freshman year and was at a party I attended on my third day on campus, and who was a fixture of my group of friends for years before the night we started dating - three months before graduation.

All of those choices were mine. I decided to start dating men who were not going to be around. Me, the one who craved connection. The one who needed intimacy. The one who was nobly bearing up in my marriage to a closed-off introvert. A closed-off introvert I chose to be with as he was preparing to move 3,000 miles away.

Three times I got to have the best of both worlds, in some ways. I had the security and ego boost of a steady relationship without the day-to-day work and compromise. I was able to live independently and do what I pleased, and what I needed to do for school and work, without actually having to be alone. I think I was scared of being swallowed up by a relationship, of becoming secondary to a man. I was afraid, too, of being too attached, too dependent, too vulnerable.

Turned out that the remaining distance in my marriage was precisely the length of my arm. I'd been holding Sam at arm's length from the beginning, and I'd been holding him responsible for it as well.

In the months since that pattern became evident to me, I've realized that I can trust this man. I can trust myself. I can trust our marriage. I lowered my arm and held out my hand, and for the first time truly invited the closeness I wanted, without fear and without bitterness. The marriage I thought was "fine" has become something extraodinary, something deeper and richer and sweeter than I could have ever imagined.

The only thing I can change is myself, and this time, that was enough.

10-20-30-40 Years Ago ~ by Jay

This one I swiped from Dawn. I'm not putting in pictures (that whole anonymity thing) but I like the idea. I've been feeling kind of reminiscent lately, anyway - end of the year, end of the decade, 25th anniversary, finding my high school yearbooks when we unpacked the books, that sort of thing.

10 years ago...

We were waiting for Eve. We didn't know it would be Eve - we were matched with her birthmother around the 15th of January - but we had completed the initial application and were in the midst of the homestudy application. We'd told our families we were in process.

I was working in a job I hated and trying not to admit to myself that I had to make a change, because every time I mentioned the idea to Sam, he panicked. I was slowly recovering from the worst episode of depression I'd ever had; I'd been on meds at that point for about six months and was starting to have entire days when I didn't feel completely hopeless. These two things were not unrelated, but at that point I had the cause and effect confused and was convinced that it was my inability to function that was making it impossible for me to do my job, rather than recognizing that the job itself was making it impossible for me to function.

20 years ago....

I was in the midst of my fellowship. Sam had completed his PhD the previous year but hadn't found an academic job; he was working for a consulting company and applying to every possible university position as well as looking at post-docs. I know I worked on Christmas, because I remember bringing Christmas dinner to the hospital for the residents (well, Sam brought it, with friends of ours, since she was also working that day and we would otherwise have had dinner together). I suspect I took a week off in January, because I usually did, and maybe that was the year we took a winter camping trip to Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. That was the year I started singing again. I joined a community choir and was loving it - it was like getting part of myself back after years away from musical performance.

30 years ago...

I was just coming back to school, sophomore year of college. We had exams after Christmas break, so I was studying for finals in Organic Chemistry and Physics as well as a survey course in English Lit. Can't remember the other course that semester. I had just finished a run as Lucy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown that was the beginning of a string of shows I worked on in college. We were about to start auditions for a musical revue based on the music of Rodgers and Hart; I was stage-managing that one. I was still in a relationship I should have left a year before, and heading for my first episode of major depression (there's a pattern here, and I sure hope it's been broken for good this time).

40 years ago....

I was 9 and in fourth grade. Drove my teacher crazy because I finished everything early, read books under my desk during class, and never seemed perturbed by correction or punishment. He finally had me running his errands and making phone calls for him to keep me busy. I was taking art lessons, piano lessons and acting lessons after school. That was the year the school allowed girls to wear pants. My father didn't allow me to wear pants until sixth grade, though, unless it was bitter cold outside, and then I wore ski pants under my skirt and had to take them off when I got to school.

That was also the year that, unbeknowst to me, my parents were holding off an effort by other families in the district to get my teacher fired because there were suspicions he was gay. I found out about when I was in college and someone else told me. My parents, when I asked, said yes, it happened, and yes, they'd made sure he could at least finish out the year. They wanted him to stay - apparently they figured if he could manage me, he could do anything - but he resigned and moved to San Francisco, thus confirming everyone's suspicions. My mother said she was pretty sure he was gay but she didn't see why that was anybody's business.

Word For the Year ~ by Jay

R has picked her word for the year and it's a good one: balance.

Over at Both Hands and a Flashlight, Tim suggests we choose three words for the year, words that will help us focus on goals important to us in the coming year. Instead of resolutions, these would serve as reminders - little verbal anchors to help us float back to what we really want and need as we are bounced around in the current of daily life.

As I said last year, I don't do New Year's Resolutions. I find the three-words-for-the-year idea appealing because it's not about resolution but about reflection and reminders. I'll be interested to see what Tim chooses. The three words feel like teshuvah, which for me goes on all year but is concentrated in Elul, not here in the cold and dark. If you're choosing three words, drop me a comment or a link - I'm curious.

I'll stick with one word for now. My word for 2009 was quiet. I wanted to reduce the physical and emotional clutter in my life, and we . My word for 2010 presented itself to me as soon as I started writing this post: connection. This year is about deepening and strengthening my connections - with Sam, with Eve, with my friends, with my family, with God, with myself.

What words are presenting themselves to you?