Light and Darkness

Luminarias in New Mexico

Mid-December brings greater awareness of light and darkness. The sun, something we take for granted most of the year, feels more precious, as she makes a briefer appearance each day. To compensate, many world traditions illuminate the early night with strung bulbs and candles this time of year, a time when light could not be more welcome.

As Katie pointed out during her visit to California last week, wintertime also naturally coincides with a looking inward. I've been thinking a lot about inward and outward, lightness and darkness, as the season seems to reflect my own process of dealing with mortality and seeking ways to bring greater light into life. After a few weeks of toil, I am finding that it is the interplay that makes each of these topics rich because without darkness, light does not exist. But this realization has not been sufficient to ease me.

Mortality has vexed the ages spurring philosophy, art, literature, and poetry since their inception and certainly troubling cavemen long before that. I know I am in good company. The trouble is that although everyone faces mortality, it is easier to ignore, to push death into the nebulous “that is going to happen later” category, if your life has not been knowingly threatened. Once you have been on the brink, how do you go back to selecting which kind of peanut butter to buy in the grocery store? Crunchy or smooth? Added sugar or just the mashed nuts? Or worse yet, how do you create long term goals or visions? I went through this same soul tug of war five years ago with my first cancer and now here I am again, struggling with the same questions. In many ways, I am finding round two more challenging. But yesterday afternoon I had a glimmer of one path forward. Think less, act more. 
 
Think less, act more.   This is contrary to how I have lived most of my life, so it is going to take some work but I am willing to give it a try because it aligns with my long term goal: inviting ease into my life.  This is an experiment. Stay tuned.

In the mean time, Happy Solstice and here’s to more light and less darkness ahead.

Not chemo

Had I not finished chemotherapy on election day, I would have been due for another round this week.  This possibility felt so present that Sunday I felt nauseous just looking at the crackers I would normally eat to settle to my stomach during the infusion, yet at the same time, I could not imagine doing it ever again. 

With each round of chemo I have grown more fatigued, never quite recovering to the energy level I had before the last infusion.  So when this week rolled around I struggled to imagine making the drive down to UCSF, voluntarily climbing in the chair and extending my arm for the next I.V.  Or opening another pack of Neupogen syringes and injecting them into my belly knowing that 12 hours later, my bones would split with pain as the medicine worked to boost my immune system. I kept thinking, how could I be doing another round this week? But if I had to, I would have and right now I would be hobbling around the house, likely tearful, trying to make the hours pass and at the end of each day, I would be grateful for just that, the end of the day. 

Remembering those days and nights acutely, David and I tried to celebrate the "not chemo" this week.  

Whenever we could remember, one of us would ask the other, "what are we doing now?"

"Not chemo!" the other would reply. 

Yesterday a beloved doctor of mine put things further into perspective, "Well you could have died.  That could have happened with chemo.  Check that off your list." 

Last night, I started thinking of all the things that don't happen each day.  All of the less obvious "not chemos."

Here is a start:

*car accident
*Luna escaping
*earthquake
*financial ruin
*crapping my pants
*complete amnesia

With my body slowed and mind jumbled by chemo, I now look for contentment in all the things that did not happen, rather than the things that did. 

The Departed

I learned about El Dia de los Muertos in high school Spanish class but did not actually experience it until living in New Mexico in 2008.  A parade assembled as it had for decades and wound through a gauntlet of cheering spectators in the South Valley of Albuquerque.  Cars transformed into mobile altars and floats transported dancing men and women dressed as skeletons in 19th century formal wear.  White and black were used to demarcate bone from empty space but everything else was ablaze in color.  The marigolds, dahlias, Mexican puppetry, music, dancing and altars honoring loved ones who have died were booming with life.  That Day of the Dead, I felt like a spectative sponge, taking everything in.  

 

The parade ended at a cement block community center housing local family altars with offerings of sweet breads, sugar skulls, flowers, fruit and often the family member's favorite meal.  Outside, strands of bright white bulbs connected vendor booths and illuminated families eating tamales and perusing artwork for sale below. Skull-masked grandmas pushing skeleton pajamaed babies in strollers covered in a rainbow of handmade tissue paper flowers.  Dogs wearing marigold wreathes. I went home thinking that Latin American cultures do a better job than most of joyfully commemorating their departed and bringing death out in the open.

This year I saw an ad in the newspaper advertising a Day of the Dead parade in Petaluma, a town 17 miles south of Santa Rosa.  I recruited David and Ellen, not knowing what to expect.  This is not New Mexico.  We arrived at the purported starting place, the bridge joining the Petaluma Riverwalk to find only a handful of other white people in street clothes like us. I was already disappointed.  Then the skeletons filed in, joining beach ball sized paper mache faces on sticks, and two costumed dance troupes.  Toddlers, grandparents and many teenagers inbetween comprised Grupo Coyolxauqui, masked and adorned with three-foot-feather headdresses, shells jangling at each ankle creating a rhythm even before the first drum strike.  The crowd grew as twilight fell.  A skeleton dressed as Pancho Villa distributed candles amongst all comers, helping people light them one by one.  Competing music from different ends of the mob rumbled and suddenly we were in motion along the riverwalk. It was then that I realized we, everyone, was in the parade. 

Soon we found ourselves in near darkness, the only light from hand held candles and a few widely spaced street lamps.  As we turned right onto the edge of Washington Boulevard, the procession necessarily narrowed to accommodate traffic and David, Ellen and I found ourselves on the heels of Grupo Coyolxanqui, dancers still spinning in unison already thirty minutes into the parade.  Wafts of tamales and pupusas from the vendors at the community arts center ahead soon overtook the cedar incense emanating from the procession.  After mingling with death, dance and drums I found myself very much alive, and ravenous. 

The town of Petaluma built a community altar within the arts center where the parade ended but clearly the party had just begun.  The mulitiered altar had a chair on top.  After wolfing down a pupusa we doubled back along the parade route to downtown.  We couldn't find our car.  We couldn't remember where we had parked our car.  I knew David and Ellen would pull it together and locate it.  Instead I followed behind them thinking about the chair.  The chair was for the departed.  A place to rest during a visit back with the living. 

As winter nears, wimpy as it may be in California, I thought about what I wanted to let go of and what I wanted to invite back.  The list in both columns is quite long but one has tugged on me since the Day of the Dead. I let go of many things during seven years of medical training, as is done by necessity.  Some were small and became routine: sleep, sitting down to eat, peeing when I needed to pee.  Some where big and painful: baby and wedding showers, birthdays, weddings, funerals, reunions.  Events commemorated on altars.  During medical training I missed many more than I attended.  And even for those that I successfully pulled a massive schedule swap and incurred federal government level favor-debt to attend, I often could only give my physical presence.  That ate at me because that is not who I am.  So now, I am inviting back events to sit in a chair and fully celebrate their significance, even if just for myself, as some are long departed. 

Pruning chemotherapy

Days before

I walk the yard
looking
for crisp edges
brown spots
yellow wilt

I pick leaves
one at a time
rub them between my thumb
and fingers
see what they can feel,
rough then nothing

I pluck faster
as a goat
finishing the rose bushes
stuck with thorns
to cherry tree branches
my scars stretch

Afterwards,
the sap in me
that makes the leaves curl
weak yellow brown,
from where I lie
the window only shows green

When Lightening Strikes Thrice

David's Mom, Mary, was diagnosed with breast cancer last week. I lagged in writing a post because I struggled to form sentences about these seemingly incomprehensible circumstances. So here is the truth told from three perscpectives.

Story 1: When I had cancer in medical school, Mike, my boyfriend at the time, was a PhD student in a high-powered Stanford Lab, the Principal Investigator of which just won the Noble Prize in Chemistry two weeks ago. When Mike went back to work and shared the news of my cancer, one of his lab mates pulled him aside and said,
"I'm so sorry Mike. When are you going to break up with her?"
"What?" Mike responded, utterly confused.
"Well you better do it soon, cancer is contagious." He honestly believed this.

Theory number one: Mary got cancer from me. So watch out friends and family, you better start wearing Xena Warrior Princess-style iron brassiere if you want to safely remain in my proximity.

Story 2: Jerry shaved his head even before I started chemotherapy to be in solidarity. Mary, not one to be outdone by Jerry, decided to go the extra mile and get breast cancer herself. These are Mary's intrepid words.

Theory number two: extra compassion gave Mary cancer.

Story 3: There actually is no story.

Theory number three: Mary was diagnosed just months after me, just months after our families connected, for no particular reason at all.

Religions have worked on the stomach-knot producing issue of finding reason in misfortune for milenia. In Christianity you often hear phrases such as, "This is my cross to bear" or "God only gives you what you can take" when a misfortune strikes. In Hinduism, hardships in this life are a reflection of ills your soul has made in previous lives. In Buddhism, there is no inherent suffering, it is our reaction to our circumstances that produces suffering.

None of these really jive with my experience or sentiments right now, although I am working on the Buddhist one. Why? Because it gives me an interesting task of reflection.

And doing is the only thing that helps.

Walking the dogs off-leash near Willowside west of Santa Rosa. Watching them investigate countless scents in the underbrush, now lush from one good rain.

Re-potting my house plants that have outgrown their soil, watering them, then watching new leaves spring forth just days later.

Carving Halloween pumpkins then watching them rot and slump off our porch railing after two days of mid-October 90 degree weather. The greyish white mold inside was thick as the fur of a wolf.

Watching Hannah, the 1.5 year old daughter of med school friends, investigate the two foot radius around our restuarant patio table. Fallen limes, a dislodged patio stone, a discarded mini-US flag, seven assorted jelly containers. A world of possibility.

Mazes

On Monday, David and I went to a four acre corn maze nestled between highway 101 and Stony Point Road, not far from the town of Petaluma.  David had an unexpected day off from work and we decided to take advantage of the lack of crowds.  We were one of the first cars in the parking lot.  The corn maze entry booth still stood empty.  Soon someone trotted over from across the field where she had been arranging pre-picked pumpkins for sale. 

"Do you want a map?"

"Nope" David and I chimed in unison without hesitation.

"Okay then, that will be 10 dollars even."

 

David and I started out trotting down the path buttressed by 12 foot tall corn stalks.  We took turns choosing the next turn when the path divided into two, sometimes three directions.  There were no dead ends in this maze so occasionally we would confidently trot in a circle and find ourselves at a familiar looking fork or corn stalk. 

Early on we firmly agreed, on no basis whatsoever, that the overall strategy of the maze involved reaching each other edge.  That at some point we would skirt the west, south and eastern edge of the square plot before finding our way to the exit on the northern edge, just meters from the entrance.  So when we spotted cars in the parking lot that bordered the western edge we cheered, then did the same when we spied the fallow field bordering the southern edge of the maze.  Then the path opened and we found ourselves standing in a hub where six  paths came together, we guessed right then found ourselves at a similarly designed hub amongst the corn, or was it the same hub?  We took the SE path then came back to the hub, then the NE path then came back to the hub, or was this yet another six-pronged hub?  And if it was, where was it in relation to the other six-pronged hub we had just stood in.

 

A twinge of anxiety overtook our original giddiness.   We found ourselves disoriented and it was beginning to get hot.  We kept circling.  On one jaunt we could see the outer eastern maze loop but again and again we could not find a way to get there.  I grew tired.  I sat on the ground in the middle of one of the hubs.  David ran loops, each time finding his way back to me rather than the way out.  We sat down together for a rest.  David spelled "Help" with shredded corn husks on the ground.  We were stubborn.  We had ran into two other groups, each with maps and declined a look.  We once again looked longingly at the eastern outer loop, we felt it was our ticket out, but were too proud to cheat through a few rows of corn to meet it.  We again sat down in he middle of one of the hubs, now not at all sure which hub it was.
 

I like how you can sort of see the
reflectionof my bald head
in this photo of the map

A pair of parents and their eight year old child entered the hub in which we sat.  This was the third time we had seen them. This time David and I asked for help.  The girl spoke to no one, incredibly focused on her task at hand as she was leading the way for her family.  The Dad however let us have a gander at the map, an areal photo printed on a postcard.  To our surprise there were four identical six pronged hubs.  And you had to traverse all four to get to the final outer loop to exit.  No wonder we were confused.  We parted ways with the family and set out to find the outer eastern loop that would lead us to the exit.  We started trotting again with renewed energy, holding hands.  We made a few false turns but knew the overall path out.  Then a few minutes later the corn rows parted and the vast pumpkin patch stood in plain view.  I felt relieved.  Free. 

We ate lunch and then David dropped me off at my Acupuncturist's office in Sebastopol.  On a small table in a treatment room I had not yet been in before, I spotted a circular metal disc etched with a maze.  Next to it lay a thin pointed stick which I presume one is supposed to use to etch their way through the maze.  I had seen this type of maze before, very intricate with the end appearing to be in the middle, but I had never given it much thought before. 

 

During the second part of my acupuncture treatment I lay supine on the table with a few needles in my feet, shins, hands and ears.  Dr. Prange gave me a breathing exercise, one that I could try during chemo the next day.  During the breaths I was to visualize a loop in the body, a breath in starting at the feet drawing up to the heart, then a breath out down to the palms, then a breath into the crown of the head, then a breath out down the spine and back of the legs to the feet.  I thought about my blood cells traveling in my body and that they too travel in maze like loops from arteries to arterioles to minuscule capillaries on to venuoles and then veins and finally back to the heart.  Just like the corn maze and just like the metallic disc on the table.  And I wondered why mazes are repeated in so many cultures.  Mazes are everywhere.

Later that day I learned that the metallic disc at the Acupuncturist's office was a replica of the famed Chartres Cathedral labyrinth built in 1230 in France.  Pilgrams from all over Europe came to walk the labyrinth as a devotional substitute for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  This process of walking quietly was felt to be an act of prayer.  Some scholars think that arriving at the center signified finding peace with god at death before the pilgram slowly retraced their steps to re-enter the outside world, be re-born, and go home again.

 

Although there are many labyrinths in Europe, labyrinths dating back to 1200 BC are found in Arizona (Tohono O'odham and Pima tribes), India, Egypt and China.  According to an O'odham oral historian, the labyrinth design depicts experiences, dreams and choices we make in our journey through life.  A legend in China tells that since evil spirits were only able to travel in straight lines, mazes served as a way to either trap them or protect the good.  Similarly, a story in Scandinavia tells that fisherman built pebble mazes on the beach before embarking on journeys at sea so as to trap bad luck on the shore.  According to Hindu lore, the universe itself is a game, a lila, that the gods play.  Walking a labyrinth is following in the steps of Shiva, the divine transformer who is lord of the dance.  Whether for protection or devotion or entertainment, I can understand the universal appeal of labyrinths that has cut across cultures and time.

I suppose there are as many labyrinth designs as interpretations of their meaning, but when I was in the corn maze I realized a couple things:

1. When you are in the maze, there is nothing else.  I did not think of cancer, of a future job, of the grocery list, of bills to pay.  It reminded me of the end of yoga class while laying in shavasana (corpse's pose). During this meditation you are supposed to empty our mind, yet I was never able to do so.  Next time I will remind myself of how easy that was in the corn maze.

 

2. There are no dead ends in life.  No matter what fix you get yourself in, there is always a way out.  And when you do, you celebrate. 

Preparing to jump...

...for joy













Harvest Fair



Is this a secret tomato-sling sign Lynne?

Last weekend my two best friends from medical school, Lynne and Sahar, came to visit.  Naturally, we had to hit up a harvest festival because that is how we roll.  Although there were several competing harvest festivals in Sonoma County that weekend, David found just the ticket.  Shone Farm, affiliated with Santa Rosa Junior College where he works, was having their very own harvest fair.  There were fields of pick-your-own tomatoes, pumpkins, sunflowers and squash, a petting zoo, hay rides, a build-your-own scare crow station, lasso practice, and a tomato slingshot activity. The festivities were set on a beautiful 365 acre farm overlooking the Russian River Valley and surrounding vineyards now turning golden yellow and vibrant crimson. 

No, we did not fit either demographic present: young families or senior citizens. 

Yes, you are correct, we dominated in the tomato slingshot activity. 

First, Sahar collected fallen, half-rotten tomatoes straight from the field.  Next we got in line with about five boys aged 8-10.  Then, we went for it.

This is the most upper body work I have engaged in since my mastectomy.  The tomato slingshot mechanism was similar to Therabands used in exercise classes and by many physical therapists, but with the added reward of hurling a soggy tomato towards bails of hay while enthusiastic boys already covered in dirt and tomato mush cheer you on.  As you can see I used the squat technique which produced reasonable launching results.

Sahar used an unconventional pose, I will call it the heal-dig half-lotus warrior, which provided excellent control and impressive distance.  Well done Sahar.








This is our new llama friend smirking at us from the barn across from the tomato field. I think he felt our slingshot technique was average judging by the expression on his face.

David, thanks for finding this beautiful farm for us and providing photo documentation.

Llama, thanks for not spitting on Lynne.