Appointment

noun

• an arrangement to meet someone at a particular time and place
• an act of appointing; assigning a job or position to someone
• a job or position
• a person appointed to a job or position
• (appointments) furniture or fittings

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/appointment

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This upcoming Friday morning I head to my appointment with the oncologist. The CT scan several weeks behind me and the message left indicating said scan was 'stable' means I enter the office with a little less anxious anticipation. It does not mean I go anxiety-free to the appointment.

Little-seeming parts of these visits raise my anxiety such as whether the nurse will get a vein on the first try or whether I'll be a short-term pin cushion, whether I'll be asked to make a payment on my somewhat sizable past-due balance when I don't exactly have the money to make a payment, what the scale will show when I step on and adjust the slider myself in an effort to make my fatness less offensive to the nurse, what 'stable' actually means, what the poking and pushing and prodding will feel like, whether the smell of the office will upset my stomach and whether the flushing toilet water will do the same should I end up needing to use the bathroom.

One of my greatest anxiety producers is the list--the thought onslaught playing like a flip book where the individual frames relate but in which, from one page to the next, there exists an evident lack of progression. At times, the list feels like a fight full of one-after-the-other sucker punches.  I end up dog-paddling in details while looking for ways to connect what's floating into a chain long enough to pull myself to shore so I can pull myself to sure.

The week ahead, as it turns out, is filled with appointments and possibly even an appointment. There's a counseling session, a chiropractic appointment, and a call with my health coach. Additionally, I have a date with a business reasoning/work styles assessment, something I must complete as part of the interview process for a new position I've applied to at Prudential (a position for which I've already had two interviews and a final decision on who will be appointed is expected by the end of the week). There's also an appointment this week to give a teaching demonstration as part of the interview process for a full-time teaching position at a local college.  As a result, my Sunday to-do list feels a bit more cumbersome than it usually does but I'm trying to remind myself that the lengthy list of appointments and to-do's are all related to potential change...they can all be stitched together to create the change chain...and while, like most individuals, I'm terrified by change, I recognize change is overdue.

So while I flip through my own appointments this week, what about you? What does your week look like? What appointment do you have on the horizon? What change chain are you stitching together?  Write about appointments.

Lost

I have a special treat for you this week.  This week on the blog I present you TWO narratives on LOST.  The first comes from the fabulous Amye Archer.  Amye Archer holds an MFA from Wilkes University. You can find her at www.amyearcher.com.  Trust me...you NEED to read her work.  My writing will follow her piece. 

Please consider following the blog and/or leave a comment if you appreciate what you read. Tell me how you interpret LOST.  I am always looking for feedback and would welcome yours.

Now...let's get to the writing---------

LOST:
adjective

• unable to find one’s way; not knowing one’s whereabouts
• unable to be found
• (of a person) very confused or insecure or in great difficulties
• denoting something that has been taken away or cannot be recovered
• (of time or an opportunity) not used advantageously; wasted
• having perished or been destroyed
• (of a game or contest) in which a defeat has been sustained

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/lost
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Amye Archer on LOST

I am six and the lure of a good candy bar pulls me from my mother's hip and into a story that will follow me forever.  How I scream when I turn to find her gone.  How I scream even though she is three feet away in the next aisle.  How I scream when I think I'm alone.  How I scream.

My parents divorce in a pressure cooker.  My mother sleeps on the couch, my father searches other women for a trace of her.  I am in the garden of their collapsed marriage.  It is calm here.  My roots stretch out and attach to the wrong man.  We survive the blast.

My husband moves out on a Thursday night.  I try not to scream when I notice he's gone.  I attach the prefix "ex" to my memories of him.

I am 27 and use my last hundred bucks to buy a black acoustic guitar from a small shop in Wilkes-Barre.  I buy a chord book and memorize them all, minor, major, open, flat.  I play a lot of Tom Petty.  My neighbors complain.  Then, on a hot fall night a boy teaches me to play Radiohead's Creep, my favorite song.  He presses my plump fingers down into a bar chord and slides our fused hands up and down the thick neck.  We make music together.  I mistake his kindness for love.

I walk the streets with Paul Simon in my ears.  Trees hang over me like fallen arches.  The sidewalks carry me to a new life.  I worry they will collapse before I make it home.

I look at the clock: 2:06 PM.  I still have four minutes before I have to leave to pick my daughters up from school.  Four whole minutes to cry.   2:09 PM: I pool cold water between my hands and splash my red beating face.  I drip one drop of Visine in each eye, brush my teeth, and leave. 

There are things I knew for certain two years ago: my marriage was strong, my kids were happy, I was becoming a writer, I was already a good mother, my husband was happy.  Now, I don't think any of those are true, they feel like certainties that belong to someone else and they are hers and not mine.   I feel like I have somehow shattered, like I am in pieces, like there is nothing but tissue paper gauzing my insides together.

I write secret letters to my husband.  Letters begging him to hang onto me-like I can anchor us to something bigger.  Like I'm not weightless and floating away.  I fold the notes like footballs and shove them in a drawer.  I save the notes for the other side of this.  For the other side of LOST.

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Virginia Grove on LOST

Two wind chimes sound. The bamboo chime taps out the soft sound of hollow raindrops while the aluminum chime sings Amazing Grace. I start to hum and then sing, beginning with the ascending perfect fourth--A-MA. I continue, changing gears...Do, Re, Me, Fa, ... sing the Do-Fa fourth, before returning to the -zing grace.

How sweet the sound...

I'm reminded of music theory class, wedged into the wooden desks at Marywood as an undergrad music therapy major, a book bag full of music theory, percussion methods, and vocal performance texts, practice books for piano and bassoon, and all the other things I carried...

I decided I'd major in music therapy when I was in eighth grade. To combine my love of music and helping others seemed the only appropriate way I could pay forward what music had given me. Music was, and will forever be, my first love. As I grew, music was my loyal friend, confidant, and greatest source of comfort and I saturated myself in it from elementary school through high school and into my days as an undergrad. In elementary school, I sang in my church choir, the French Choir, started on clarinet, and tried out for handbells (I didn't make the group-- my right hand didn't ring bells well, my left hand--my non-dominant hand--was the best bell ringer that side of Philadelphia). In middle school, I continued on clarinet and in school and church choir. I took private vocal and instrumental lessons. I played clarinet and started on bassoon in high school, playing whichever was most appropriate in marching band, concert band, orchestra, and wind ensemble. I continued singing in 'homeroom chorus' an abbreviated opportunity choir set up for those who couldn't fit any other aspect of the vocal program into their schedules. And then I applied to and auditioned at a handful of schools where I could major in music therapy with bassoon as my primary instrument. For as much as I loved playing and singing in a group though, the greatest joy surrounded solitary music. Alone in a car, singing to whatever was playing, I was happy. With my Walkman attached to my pocket and my headphones on, I was happy. Listening to my blue and white stereo in my blue and white bedroom while pressing play and record to tape my favorite songs off the radio, I was happy. I was happy practicing my clarinet or bassoon, particularly when no one was home. Experimenting with chords and rhythm on my white guitar or my keyboard, I was happy.

There isn't music I don't like, save for the heavy, violent, angry music my good friend refers to as the 'Kill your mother, kill your father, put the dog in the oven-----ahhhhhhh' music. I could do without most of that music (though, believe me, there are days). I went through phases of addictions to pop music, classical music, a long phase of a deep, deep love of show tunes, Christian music, country music, and nearly everything on the spectrum. Like other forms of creative expression, when I could connect with the vibration of and the story in and behind the music, the music, my friend, spoke for me and...my story...

I once was lost...

Moving away from home to go to college was disorienting. In the spin of that period of time, I eventually dropped out of the music program (frustrated with the narrow focus of the department), started as an English major (realizing how much I missed the intricacies of language) and then, incapable of going to classes post 9/11, was 'let go' from the college. Rather than withdrawing from classes for fear that I would need to go home a failure, I simply stopped going and took failing grades where only 'A's belonged. I started work as a telemarketer, a poor choice for someone who dislikes the phone as much as I did...and still do. I eventually lost that job. I left my desk to head to the bathroom one morning or afternoon and completely lost track of time and myself. After that, I'd ride to work with Kim, who would work while I'd stay in the car, terrified, for the length of her workday. I don't recall how long this went on. I started a new job a period of time after that, one where I would have done editing work. When, after training, I was told I had a beautiful speaking voice and was going to be put on the phones instead, I set up my desk as though I'd continue on, and right before lunch packed all of my things in my bag, called Kim, went to lunch, and never went back. Not long after that, I started as a temporary employee at Prudential and was hired on as a full-time employee less than a year later. And I'm still there...10+ years, home owners, car owners, four academic degrees (three my own and one Kim's), and two major health challenges (one my own and one Kim's), and one pretty fabulous wedding later.

During that first attempt at an undergrad degree, I tried hard to fix myself. I talked with the school counselor (she only wanted to talk about my family and all I wanted was help getting to class), attempted to find someone to talk to outside of the school when the school counselor didn't help (and couldn't afford to pay that one, or the next one, or the next one), and took various medications my mother had from the drug reps in an effort to gain some kind of emotional stability and to lose weight (because obviously, I'd be happier if I wasn't also fat).

My senses changed during that period of time. Smells were paralyzing. Sound--particularly repetitive sound-- turned more maddening than I'd ever remembered it being. Anything along the scale of physical contact was risky. Even my vision was impacted to the degree that I'd lose my sight entirely for periods of time. And so, I drew and painted and wrote and read and listened to music and used everything I had in my backpack in an effort feel less lost.

I could never sustain ‘less lost’ (just as I haven't been able to sustain weight loss). If anything, I felt more lost. I ended up in the emergency room a handful of times (and can think of one additional time I should have) for overdosing on prescription or OTC medication. The lone remaining Xanax sample pack I'd taken from my mother's grab bag of drugs and missed taking in the one attempt, was confiscated from the purple foot locker in my dorm room and attached to my file in the school nurse's office. I wanted so desperately to fall the rest of the way into lost...to blend into the world as part of it, but to be indistinguishable and untouchable and to, in every possible way, extinguish expectation. So I worked to push away from people I loved or who loved me. I stopped writing and drawing and reading and worked to stay still...very still...still and quiet. I wanted to be overlooked, ignored, and abandoned entirely so that everything made sense and the tension and conflict between home and away, between caring and not caring, between school and no school, between fat and thin, between safety and danger, between what some people led me to believe and what others wanted me to believe, between dead and alive, stopped. In the tension and conflict I self-imposed an expectation to equalize or diffuse--to level off-- to harmonize-- and when I couldn't, when I failed to create conditions where other people were OK and couldn't make myself OK, the degree of self-loathing was impenetrable and the words I spoke to myself could have killed me if only I'd spoken them at myself in an even harsher way.

There's a very distinct line between wanting to die and wanting to kill yourself. Wanting to die requires lining up circumstances in a way that the desired result can be produced. Wanting to kill yourself required a strength I didn't--and don't--have. There is a wise truth in recognizing not everyone wishes to live out a life sentence.

I should be dead many times over, more times than anyone knows, and figuring out what to do with that and then, if you figure out what to do figuring out how to do what you've figured out, creates a pressure and a tension that feels all too similar. Thoughts can change so quickly but feelings, once you can get them, take you where they will. I am still too much in my head with my thoughts while I try to figure out how to invite and manage feeling. So I remove and remove and remove-- I fall into the cradle of the arts and I rest.

If I could have captured that Ginny-- boxed her, framed her, painted her--I would have sat her up somewhere, like an Elf on the Shelf, and told her sit and wait it out. I'd have told her sometimes you won't find someone who can fix what hurts because sometimes you need to be lost in the hurt until you heal yourself. I'd have told her to try to feel less stupid and needy and small and unworthy when wanting to reach out for help or after having reached out for help because she wasn't stupid or needy or small or unworthy...rather, she was hurt. I'd have told her I understood how difficult it could be to believe me and that it mattered that she didn't, but that if she could pretend like she did--like she could pretend herself into other worlds worlds away from where she was lost...worlds where the wretch like her could be saved...she'd find out she was OK.

Ginny wanted to be back on her bed at Mom-Mom's house, curled up in her pjs on the blanket, curling her toes around the bumps and pulls on the bedspread, with a tiny copy of Black Beauty in her lap. She wanted her head on the rust-colored, satin pillowcase. She wanted to smell wet grass in the backyard and honeybuns baking in the oven. That Ginny wanted to get to classes and prove she could be successful. But she just felt lost and alone because, in so many ways, she was.

But now am...

found? Yes and no. I'm not that person anymore. I'm not not that person anymore. I've grown beyond her and yet she comes along. Most times, she is harmony when I am melody. Other times, she is the dissonant melody and I am left trying to harmonize.

Right now, today, her song is too long and too intense and the sensations her music brings are unnerving.

Right now, today, I'm just trying to remove myself from sensation unlike sensation I've felt before.

I'm dissonant trying to resolve.

Expect

verb
regard (something) as likely to happen; regard (someone) as likely to do or be something; used to indicate that one supposes something to be so, but has no firm evidence or knowledge

Origin:

mid 16th century (in the sense 'defer action, wait'): from Latin exspectare 'look out for', from ex- 'out' + spectare 'to look' (frequentative of specere 'see')

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/expect

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There's a TRAIN song...

"Sing Together"

If I go before I say to everyone in my ballet
Let me take this chance to thank you for the dance
If I run out of songs to sing to take your mind off everything
Just smile, sit a while with the

Sun on your face and remember the place we met
Take a breath and soon I bet you'll see
Without you I would never be me
You are the leaves of my family tree

Sing together
If you knew me from the very start,
Or we met last week at the grocery mart
Just sing together
It's the least that I can do
My final gift to you
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo

When I'm past the pearly gate, I will find some real estate
Where we can settle down and watch the world go round
We'll send down all the love we got and let them know we got a spot
For them to be and it's all free,

The sun on your face and remember the place we met
Take a breath and soon I bet you'll see
Without you I would never be me
You are the leaves of my family tree

Sing together
If you knew me from the very start,
Or not at all you're still a part, just
Sing together
It's the least that I can do
My final gift to you
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo

Sometimes, when I drive, and the song plays, I imagine it playing at my funeral...imagine its simplicity...imagine who would connect that simplicity with the simple desire I had for happiness. Happy times like playing with the dog or her morning flops beside me in bed...times like the wedding or the joy of the first Spring morning after leaving the windows open for the first time after a long winter.  In those moments, I know I'm not a bad person so I look back for them. But when I look back, I find a great deal of other 'stuff' mixed in and that leaves me hurting.

I've felt sick for a very VERY long time. When cancer emerged, I was almost grateful that something someone else could recognize, proved that I was, indeed, full of disease.  Scans and bloodwork proved it.  I felt heard. What I'd held, what I'm certain I was born with, had finally boiled over--sent  splatters flying over the edges of my skin leaving burns.

I received a voicemail from the oncology office on Friday that my CT scan was stable. I missed the call and despite the invite on the voicemail to call if I had any questions, I didn't call back because I didn't want to bother anyone. That is something I do when I feel like I have the past few weeks. I lose the kick to move and should I start to feel myself move, I effectively kick myself back down. When you believe you deserve to be kicked, the safest way to be kicked is to kick yourself.

I expected the good news to alleviate some, if not all, of the anxiety I've been feeling for the past month. That hasn't happened. By no means does that indicate that I'm not grateful for the results and for the chance to move another year into this person others seem to believe me capable of becoming. But I'm stubborn. I fight them, because I don't believe them. The expectations are too high. But I can set them higher. High enough that they aren't attainable because that way, all I do is fail myself and can be, and remain, solely responsible, solely to blame. And I've always felt at fault.

I don't know what forward looks like right now. I don't know when this pattern will break. I don't know what I'm expecting of myself.  But, as always, I'm trying. I push myself...hard...maybe too hard and maybe, sometimes, in the wrong direction. Now that I'm done waiting for the phone call, I feel like I'm waiting for the next thing. In that place, I'm bringing in incredibly vivid pictures of old things....a song setting off a memory I'd never had before, a dream I wake anxious from that is full until I try to store it. 

This week, I'm going to try to borrow patience from you and expect that I'm going to feel better soon. Because my body is tired and my mind is exhausted and I'd rather be delivering happiness than trying to determine what I'm expecting.

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...