Wait

verb

[no object]

• stay where one is or delay action until a particular time or until something else happens
• (wait for or on) stay where one is or delay action until (someone) arrives or is ready
• remain in readiness for some purpose
• be left until a later time before being dealt with
• [with object] informal defer (a meal) until a person’s arrival

• (cannot wait) used to indicate that one is eagerly impatient to do something or for something to happen

• act as a waiter or waitress, serving food and drink

noun

•  [in singular] a period of waiting

• (waits) British archaic street singers of Christmas carols.
• historical official bands of musicians maintained by a city or town.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/wait?q=wait

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Friday night, I had my first CT scan in about a year. Around 10 A.M. I called the imaging center in response to a call the day before from their collection department and used a valid, but old credit card to make a payment on my old CT scan debt...last thing I needed was to arrive to have the staff tell me they wouldn't do the scan because of that past due balance. $139 past due, in the grand scheme of the $100,000 in medical debt doesn't seem terribly worthy of attention, except that last time they wouldn't even let me (or the oncologist) schedule until a payment had been made.

At 2:30, I chugged the first of two bottles of citrus flavored liquid needed for the IV contrast.  At 3:30, I drank half of the second, saving the remainder for appointment time. I arrived at the center at 4:15, the remainder of the second bottle in hand. After the obligatory personal information verification, I took a seat...and waited.

My big ass self watched the new Big Gas Savings K-Mart commercial, read about why 'us runners should do a tri' as I thought about my complete abandonment of the gym and healthy eating over the previous bit of time, and I made a desperate effort to avoid eye contact with a coworker who came in while I sat, not because I wouldn't talk but because in this space, I wanted quite intensely to be invisible.

After waiting past my appointment time, I was finally asked back. "So why are you here? Why did doctor order this test?" the tech tossed out, without making eye contact and prepared to click her way through her fancy i-Pad screens.

"I'm here for the scan to check for recurrence signs after being diagnosed with Hodgkins in 2009."
And then she looked up. "Oh, so it's routine..."

A 'yup' came out in reply. I held in the irritation around the word 'routine' because I would be now, and always tried to be, the good patient, a carryover from striving to be the good daughter, the good student, the good worker, the good friend.  I always strove to be good out of fear that being bad would make everything worse.

I laid down on the scan table and the process of finding a suitable vein for the IV began. People who do this for a living are either good at it, or they aren't. My godmother, a few years lost to a long journey with breast cancer, was amazing. One stick, vein hit, in and done.  This tech, not as wonderful.  One stick, left arm, without success and she starts to look at the veins on the back of my hand. 

"Please not the hand, if you can avoid it..." I get out, taken over by that person who can talk.

Right side (and verified by post appointment counting): one stick at elbow bend, one stick mid-arm.  Then one stick back of right hand. I turn my head and start to cry as she sticks the back of the right hand again. I jump, and cry harder. I apologize.

"No, no. You're there.  If we can't get it, we'll just do it without the contrast" I get as I wipe away tears, seemingly a request not to apologize and a reassurance that we'll figure it out.  But I feel bad, because I don't want to be difficult and I want the scan to be what the doctor asked for because I don't want to be difficult.

"Is there anyone else who might be willing to give it a try?" I ask, feeling that saying something to get what the doctor wants rather than potentially offending the tech is the lesser of two evils.

"No...and that's what makes me angry.  I got behind and everyone else did too and so now everyone's gone," she answers, less angry than I expected.  She actually sounds happy.  "I'll try it again."

On the sixth try, just a short 1/4 inch above the first try, she gets in.  My tears stop and I laugh and reassure her it's totally OK.  And it is...and isn't.  She asks me when I come again to remind her to go higher than she thinks is right when she's looking for a vein.  I make a mental note not to come again for a scan at the start of a holiday weekend and to, provided I can summon up the courage and smush the desire to be difficult, ask who was on last time I came in and make sure I go to someone else. 

She pushes the contrast through the IV and warns me of the familiar flushed feelings and the sense that "you've peed your pants."  When I nod, she replies "Oh, you know, you know.  You've done this before."

She goes back into the room to operate the scanner and I slide in, the contrast that has never bothered me before making me feel like I'm suffocating.  The warmth is intolerable and the anxiety continues to rise.  I look at the scanner tube no more than a foot above my head and start to cry again, thinking about everything from the scan itself to all of the ways I fail.  I recognize as I hold my breath and wait in response to the machine's request that my weight, which had been steadily declining for a year or so post treatment, is growing again and soon, which a close friend had mentioned in relation to her mom's experience with illness, I'd also be unable to fit in machines.  I'm sure the fat arms didn't make finding a damn vein any easier.  And I cry more. 

The tech comes out and removes the IV and reminds me we have two more passes through the machine before we're done.  The warmth of the contrast is slowly going away.  I want to close my eyes, but I can't, so I stare, blankly ahead at the numbers on the disk inside the scanner until they fade into the swirl of metal and the air in the room and the hall and the building and the city and the state until, at end, every thing's blended into the ocean.

I gather my things and head out.  When I get in the car, I start to cry again.  And I'm shaking.  I can't stop the shaking.  For hours, I can't get warm enough.  The warmth never gets below the surface of my scan.  It is and isn't about the scan.  The shaking feels mostly like waiting...mostly like the space between attempt one at getting the sample when, years ago, I went for the bone marrow biopsy and the second, thankfully, successful attempt.  The tears were the same then too.  Crying in the space between.  The shaking feels mostly like the space between the phone call and going to the police station when I was in 8th grade. The same year I spent drinking water with lemon for meals.  The police asked us to come in for questioning because an anonymous report had been made to whatever the child safety line equivalent was at that time.  It was in the waiting I felt the worst.  The wait before my father came home.  Then the wait that was the van ride there.  Then the wait to talk.  Then the wait between each subsequent meeting with the officials sent to talk to me at school.  Then the wait until charges were dismissed.  I've spent much time waiting for the pass. 

The incredible effort it takes to blend what is so expertly that the future disappears, and with it the threat of what could be.  It diffuses all of it into a tolerable energy.  A quiet vibration.

It shouldn't be long and I will hear from the oncologist with the results of the scan.  I see her again for an appointment the end of June, provided of course the scan doesn't show anything questionable.  She wanted me to be 15 pounds down from the last visit when I saw her again.  She also wanted me to have scheduled and gone to the gyn.  Likely, neither of those will happen.  The first is an impossibility unless, of course, I go back to the water with lemon only at all meals like I did back in 8th grade.  The second, well, I certainly could (and know I should) make the appointment, but right now I just can't. 

So while I wait, I'll be trying to expertly blend past and present and future in a way that enables the quiet vibration, crossing with care, between... 

This is routine...

OK

exclamation
used to express assent, agreement, or acceptance

adjective
[predic.]
satisfactory but not exceptionally or especially good; (of a person) in a satisfactory physical or mental state; permissible; allowable

adverb
in a satisfactory manner or to a satisfactory manner; [in singular]
an authorization or approval

verb (OK's, OK'ing, OK'd)
[with object]
sanction or give approval to

Origin:

mid 19th century: probably an abbreviation of orl korrect, humorous form of all correct, popularized as a slogan during President Van Buren's re-election campaign of 1840; his nickname Old Kinderhook (derived from his birthplace) provided the initials

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/OK?q=Ok

________________________________________

I come upon the question over and over again, generally when I'm already anxious. In the anxiety, I ask "Am I OK?" and when a racing heart with a pulse I can feel travel out to the edges of nails and hair, a flushed face, odd muscle movements, and sometimes deep body pain replies, too many times I answer, "No. I am not OK." 

For about a month, I've been experiencing a lengthy, seemingly generalized anxiety punctuated by crippling panic attacks lasting anywhere between a few minutes to two days. I certainly don't feel OK. 

Here's what's tricky: as of late, when I don't feel OK physically, my body brings back two periods of time in my life (it used to be one). The second period of time returns first. The tricky part? The not-OK time pulsing its way through is a calendar period of time I am coming to over these next few months. 

For the first time since the initial diagnosis, I approach my CT scan not having had one for a year. The appointment with the oncologist is scheduled for Friday morning,  June 21st. It has lined up feeling like the year I was diagnosed. That Friday (though I'm finished with the MA & MFA degrees) a new group starts the Wilkes University Creative Writing Low-Residency program. The Friday I started my degree, back in 2009, I left work on a half day, and received the call while walking to the car that the first test, a chest xray, was abnormal.

Now, mind you, I know this is not the same, yet it feels very familiar and in the familiarity some of the fear hangs out. Saturday morning, the appointment for the CT scan arrived and so I'll need to call to change it this week as, is typically the case, they've plopped it in the middle of the workday. When I do schedule the scan, I'll shoot for early June so, with the grace of the universe, the results will be OK, and so too my tough months of June, July, and August.

The panic and anxiety runs much, much deeper than the cancer. As I fall into feeling physically like a failure (when I'm not eating well, when I'm not going to the gym, when I'm not getting enough sleep, etc.), not only does the feeling of being threatened by cancer return, but also the feeling of being threatened much earlier in my life. When I see or read about terror, I'm folded in to the story, though circumstances may or may not echo my own. The sense of suspension is the same...the waiting for it to pass.

And so, I was asked two questions related to this anxiety for which my answers feel particularly telling. The first had to deal with how I was getting through the panic and anxiety. Typically, I need to think to answer questions, but in the moment I answered "I get small and quiet" I recognized how much is embedded in my body in ways no thinking need be involved. 

The second question dealt with how I got through the day when I heard about the Sandy Hook shootings (this not because I was in any way directly impacted, but rather because of the familiarity of sadness and terror). Again, I didn't have to think. That day, I cried...hard and in quantity.  I do my best not to cry most times, but despite my best efforts, sometimes it pours out anyway.  As I've said many times to many people, I am a particularly ugly crier.

Here's an interesting connection or three:  (1) One can be small and cry, but crying (the kind we likely all need at one point in time or another) cannot be quiet. 'Quiet' crying looks like something quite different than a good cry. To be safe, I need to be small and be quiet.  (2) The worst of the anxiety started around the time I went to a chiropractor for the first time. It heightened with the use of a tool on my back and neck that makes a cracking/cranking noise that reminds me of the cracking/cranking of the tool used during my bone marrow biopsy, an experience that itself reminded me of an uncomfortable experience from when I was little. (3) The whole process of this intense anxiety perpetuates itself- if I can't sleep, I'm tired and if I'm tired, everything seems worse, so I eat more and eat poorly and don't make it to the gym, so I beat myself up and eat poorly and too much and while I'm trying to feel physically better, I feel physically worse.

What's remarakble are all the ways we can and can't be OK. As the definition points out, OK shoots below good or great. That I am shooting at OK in no way means I want to settle, rather it is an acknowledgment that sometimes before we can shoot higher, we need to come back to balanced...we need to simply be AND, more importantly FEEL OK.  To feel OK, I probably need to cry and somehow need to feel less vulnerable and embarrased by how badly I'm fighting against letting this anxiety be.  I'm spending a great deal of energy trying to will it away...trying to be small and quiet while I wait for it to pass over. Here's hoping that time is coming...

Family

family: [treated as singular or plural] a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household; a group of people related to one another by blood or marriage; the children of a person or couple; a person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy; a group of people united in criminal activity; (Biology) a principal taxonomic category that ranks above genus and below order, usually ending in -idae (in zoology) or -aceae (in botany); a group of objects united by a significant shared characteristic; (Mathematics) a group of curves or surfaces obtained by varying the value of a constant in the equation generating them; all the descendants of a common ancestor;
a race or group of peoples from a common stock; all the languages ultimately derived from a particular early language, regarded as a group;
(adjective) [attributive] designed to be suitable for children as well as adults

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/family
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My mother won't receive a card for Mother's Day. When my mother asked me years ago to stop sending cards both Kim and I had signed, I stopped sending cards. Perhaps I should have stopped sending cards sooner...maybe during those undergrad college years when money allowed only an e-card to be sent and I was asked to send a replacement because there'd been a spelling error in the first, meaning the card could not be printed and displayed on the mantle as a perfect testament to a perfect relationship between a perfect mother and a perfect daughter.  We had so much perfect ooooozing out of us, we turned dryer lint to gold.

Though she will tell YOU otherwise because you must believe in the story of our family she's created (the 'public' portrayal) she will tell me I am a failure as a daughter and as a person (the reality of our private relationship). While that had been clearly communicated before (in some less-than motherly ways), when she told me telling her I was getting married was bad but telling her I had cancer was worse, I understood on a whole other level.  Equating my having cancer to my marriage, somehow scaling them near each other on the bad end of a scale, reinforced what she thought about me. Though words like the cancer vs. marriage comment are hurtful, they are welcomed reminders of my own sanity when the mass-market paperback story varies so widly from the story distributed only within our family of four.

My mother won't receive an email or a phone call on Mother's Day. I've emailed over the last few months off and on in response to her emails, but have not seen or talked on the phone with my mother since her and my father visited after Christmas. 

My father is the oldest of three. In the last two weeks, my mother made sure to ask if I was in contact with my father's two younger sisters (which I'm not) because if I was my elderly great aunt didn't want them to know she wasn't doing well.  It has been years since I've spoken to anyone on that side. I suspect it was a two-sided decision, but over the years isolating our 'four' became more important (necessary?).

My mother is an only child of alcoholic parents. Her mother, while she was miserable to her, loved the night and day out of me. I was my Mom-mom's Gingersnap. All of my grandparents have passed and when I lost Mom-mom in 1989, I lost my weekend escape, my magical, Narnia-like walk through her backyard to the creek, and the love that sustained me long enough for me to make it to sixth grade.

I am one of two. My younger brother (the other half of the human love that sustained me as a child) united with another soul only a few months after Kim and I married. Their blessing ceremony was the last I saw him, chatting only a few times after that event through emails or texts, and even then, only to deal with issues in a moment. 

More and more my family continues to evolve into my FAMILY...

There is of course, Kim and our fuzzy children, Meg (otherwise known as Pookie, a dog with a love of chasing light), Hazel (a cat who is unaware she can jump), Momma (formerly known as Stach, a stray we welcomed into our home and a toe amputee), Piper and Mooie (brother and sister, kittens born in our home to the aforementioned Momma), and the three koi (Frisky, Tiger, and Luna) who live in our pond (a pond, mind you, described in the listing we read before we found our home as a 'private water feature,' stirring up premature images of My Big Fat Greek Wedding-like fountains).

There is a handful of dear friends (Sarah, Liz, Devin, Marlo, Ed, Cheryl, Terri), a grouping of extended friends, some 'traditional' family, a powerhouse trio of mentors who are my greatest supporters (Sue, Dr. Becky, Geri), a collection of the few whose positive words I hold differently over time (Miss Kamenir, Mom-mom, Barbara Hoffman, Ally, my godmother) some even after they've passed.

There is the other, long-standing powerhouse trio of my evolving FAMILY: music, art, and words, best contributing when they all play together under their common last name, IMAGINATION.

And there is the FAMILY created from space--filled by earth, fire, water, and air, filled by nightime and daytime, filled by connection to nurturing roots thankfully reaching much deeper than those on the 'private' family tree.

On this day, celebrate who and what nurtures your beautiful being, who and what embraces, unconditionally, the totality of you. And to those people, places, and things, offer out and up a very HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Vow

Vow:
noun

• a solemn promise.
• (vows) a set of promises committing one to a prescribed role, calling, or course of action, typically to marriage or a monastic career.

verb

• [reporting verb] solemnly promise to do a specified thing: [with clause]
• [with object] archaic dedicate to someone or something, especially a deity

The supermoon appears above the temporarily closed Hotel Pere Marquette in Peoria, Ill.

Adam Gerik / AP

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By the time I went to bed, the clock showed well past midnight. We'd started early that day, with a bowl of blueberry oatmeal. When I showered and dressed in my 'day-of' clothes, I dressed carefully, deliberately. I blew my hair dry slowly, on the low heat setting, and put in tiny purple earrings.

We packed the car, hanging our attire on opposite sides of the back of the freshly detailed Subaru Forester, my dress stretching across the entire backseat.

It rained lightly on the way there...up the highway and into Montrose, where we stopped to pick up the arrangement and individual roses for the altar and see the arrangements for the tables at the reception, to be held later that evening, back in Montrose...and we started out again...

The sky was clear by the time we reached Binghamton.  The perfect May weather we'd been tracking all week arrived when we did.  Our wedding party and those participating in the ceremony were already there. We ran through the ceremony, handed out gifts to our bridal party, and to those participating.  And then we ate some lunch.

Nearly right before we started, we both got changed...together, along with our bridal party.

Kim and Unc went to their side of the church, my father and I, the other. Unc walked Kim in the front of the round church with the blue carpet, while my father walked me in from the other side. The intro to our wedding song played...simple guitar...before our dear friends, Ed and Liz, started to sing the Jason Mraz song, 'I Won't Give Up'...

Sarah read a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit, Dr. Becky a poem of Maya Angelou's. Devin read from A Gift from the Sea, and Marlo from 1st Corinthians.

And before you knew it, there were vows to be spoken. I tucked my hand behind my back and tried not to pay attention to the microphone. And I read to her my vows:

"When I teach and my students are nervous sharing their writing, we often start with them reading someone else’s words. It gives them a chance to express what they think and feel while helping to ease them into confidence in their own thoughts, feelings, and voice.

So let me start by doing the same-- a poem, for you from me, written by the late Adrienne Rich: I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I’ve been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You’ve kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone…;
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carried the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.

Kim, my Velveteen, today I am grateful for many things.
I am grateful for every day we have together.

I am grateful for 5s. February 5th: the anniversary of my final chemotherapy treatment. April 5th: the anniversary of your open heart surgery. I am grateful for May 5th--this day, a day we stand in grace to express the belief we share in the power of love and goodness-- this day when I can show you to everyone--when I can recite the poetry you are to the people we love.

Though grateful for many things, today I am most grateful for our struggles. Kites do indeed rise highest against the wind. When I think about the winds against which we've stood together, I recognize that our struggles have given me courage--They have encouraged me to a place where I stand differently secure in how deeply I love you and the life we have together.

You know I am a lover of words but in this moment words do not do what the best words can. In this moment words fall short of the unending poetry I want to give you.

Today, the power of the words is in the speaking--in the standing with you and everyone else who has chosen to be here with us, as we celebrate this amazing day, because they love us as much as I love you-- as much as we love them--they have helped us hold the kites in the air.

Today, I promise to love you as I always have and always will. I promise to sing you funny songs and whistle the last note of your off-season Christmas tunes. Today I promise, no matter what struggles we are yet to meet, that I will stand with you and let our joy of this life see us simply to a place of health--to a place of growth-- to a place of even greater love.

Today, I am grateful for my voice--grateful for the power in telling you, and everyone else, I love you."

And we were pronounced married. Rings on our fingers and a kiss between us, 14 years of being together had all led to May 5th.

And Ed and Liz sang again...and I cried as she hit the notes that linger from 'In This Heart'--

We walked out, hand in hand, stood in line and hugged those we love most. There were pictures, and later, there was dinner and a reception and finally, later, a quiet space opened in which the smile we'd started earlier that day burned into each of us in a way that we'd be able to get back to it forever.

A year later, I'm back to that smile...the same smile. And it's brighter than the supermoon that graced the sky on May 5th, 2012. Such hope...such love...