stillsmallvoicedotnet

There have been many working titles for this update.  The words have continued to morph and shape-shift, bouncing and tumbling in an attempt to form a cohesive whole.  These days have been lacking in clarity, a dearth of epiphanies.  Words stretch and yawn into the fog of uncertainty, lacking tidy-endings.  Lots of balled up paper around the virtual trash can.

Some of the working titles include: ‘here,’ ‘fall from grace,’  and ‘cowboys & aliens.’  Titles are a fun game.  They are openers, full of potential.  They are flights of fancy during the walk to work or while stopped at a traffic light.  You think you will remember because they are too good to forget, and somehow the day has a way of reabsorbing the best ones.  Working titles suggest a better one might come along.  But then a parallel story line or an unintended tangent eclipses the gist of what you had intended to say (or live, for that matter) and there goes that working title, a forgotten string of words on the editing floor.

‘here’ – as in the long and winding road that brought me the present day.  Most of the time I am grateful, however lately ‘here’ feels like discomfort and transition.  Sometimes, when I wish for the myth of stability and the illusion of permanence, I imagine that everyone else received the memo on how to live their life like a proper grown-up.  You too?  Do you remember looking at your parents or the other adults in your life and thinking they had it all figured out by nature of the fact that they were simply an ‘adult’?

‘fall from grace’ – when aforementioned ‘here’ feels like an article of clothing that is one size too small, and one seam too tight.  You want desperately to slip out of the too tight thing and leave it on the rack, but that is simply not an option.  This too tight feeling is your new reality, for now.  Agitated, irritated, and restricted are merely conditioning  so that when the delirious release into  freedom comes along, you don’t hesitate.  As it turns out, the too tight thing is the skin you are attempting to shed.  It is not meant to be comfortable.

‘cowboys & indians’ – the blockbuster, star-studded production of a movie that came out at the end of July, around the time I received an invitation to attend a wedding in Goa, India.  The plot of that movie and the chances of me going to India shared the same likelihood, as in, not very.  Or so I thought.  The journey begins November 5.

back to that missed memo…

Frankie Valli was whining grease is the word, is the word that you heard, it’s got groove it’s got meaning from the sound system outside of Whole Foods.  It threw me back in that visceral way songs and scents have the power to do.  That movie and soundtrack hit the charts just as the alarm sounded, rudely waking me from the slumber of childhood. Sandy, Danny, the T-Birds and the Pink Ladies were on constant rotation providing an escape and reprieve while my mom figured out how to move us (me, my sibs and her) into a place of our own on Long Island during the months we lived on Oak Neck Drive with Aunt Donna and Uncle Billy.  Dad stayed in Virginia because they had entered the territory of separated.

Of all the possible digressions enthusiastically raising their eager little hands, the one I’ll pick is that it is some kind of amazing that she summoned the courage and determination to pick-up and Uhaul me and my sibs to New York without a plan or a career.  Just a place to land.  Everything changed.  There is no way of knowing how it would have played out differently if we had stayed, if she had not listened to her unhappiness.  It was a decided departure point and the game of relativity was on.  Sound of record scratching; visual of lid being torn off; sensation of carpet being pulled out from under.

Relativity, in physics, a theory, formulated essentially by Albert Einstein, that all motion must be defined relative to a frame of reference and that space and time are relative, rather than absolute concepts. Or relativity being defined as dependence of a mental state or process upon the nature of the human mind.  Not sure which definition to run with so let’s just say the frame of reference blew wide open.

It was pretty simple up until then.  Being anywhere outside of normal never occurred to me up until the move to NY, away from Dad and the standard definition of a family.  Inside the bubble of stability, there was nothing that caused that differentiation while my parents were still married.  Fantasy Island and the Hardy Boys were the high points of the week, we ate dinner as a family, I had my own room, as did my little brother but my two younger sisters had to share, all my friends were older than me, there were two friends named Mike and the one I had a crush on liked some new guy on the radio named Elvis, not Presley, Costello. We lived in Virginia on Cecilia Court and I took the bus to school.  Normal.

The departure from normal is to be credited with the slow, meandering, uncharted course that landed me here.  Here where there are equal measures of holy moments to balance out the odd-fitting, uncomfortable stretches of unknowing and shedding layers of skin.

Walking along the streets of downtown Oakland in late August from my home to have dinner with friends at their home, carrying a bottle of wine, the sky awash with diffusely bright sunlight, the heat blazed directly onto my chest as I took a turn and Jeff Buckley’s Lilac Wine was playing on random from my iPod.  It was a perfect moment.  It struck me that this moment was no accident.   These holy moments are the transcendent trade-off for the occasional discomfort and growth pains of shedding skin.  And I am grateful that my world cracked open the summer Grease was the word that I heard.

Other lyrics from Grease: ‘conventionality belongs to yesterday,‘ and ‘we start believing now that we can be who we are.’

There’s no place like normal.  There’s no place like normal.  There’s no place like normal.  Really.

Let your love be disgraceful, crazy and wild. If you’re too holy and careful God will escape you. – Rumi

I like my days to have lots of chapters.  Some people look like cartoons, others like novels as they walk towards you.  I walked past the most perfectly matched couple on Harrison at 21st.  On 20th the sun diffusely bright light was aimed right at my heart while lilac wine was playing , I was carrying wine to a dinner party at a friends within walking distance of my home after a productive day 
It was a perfect moment - I was wearing somethig I would have worn at NYU, but I am 44 now.  And I've built a life that allows for this.  What is a wedding dress supposed to create the illusion of?  A virgin, statue to freeze a moment?

The plan was to come back from Alcatraz and drive through North Beach to see if we could find parking and go to a pastry shop or cafe.  While on the ‘rock’ earlier that day, we’d decided cannolis at a cafe were preferable to a sundae at Ghiradelli.  Such sophisticated travelers!

We were all tired from a long week and neither Ben nor Alex were even remotely entertained by the idea of riding on a cable car.  I had to let go of feeling like a failure for having my nephews visit and NOT have a cable car experience.  When a pass through North Beach, all the way through to Coit Tower did not reveal a magical rock- star parking spot, we opted for a trip back to Trieste on Piedmont in Oakland.  I assured them we’d find cannolis there and parking would be easy.

Parking was abundant in the lot behind Trieste and we locked up and went in.  We got the cannolis to go and Alex looked around at the looks of the place and decided he liked it.  So we stayed, sat by the wall and realized that we were the only people facing out.  Everyone else was looking in our direction because a television was directly above us broadcasting the Tour de France.  We enjoyed being in the fray for about fifteen minutes.  There’s nothing in particular that comes to mind when I think about what we might have talked about sitting there.  And anyway, what came next was so traumatizing that even if there was a whisper of a memory, it was slapped out of consciousness.

We walked with all the time in the world in front of us on the way back to my car, despite the fact that we still had to pack their bags, eat dinner, make a play list of the music we’d listened to during our week together and watch a movie.  Then I saw that someone had smashed my rear passenger window.  I got that visceral punch in the gut feeling that accompanies that genre of rude awakenings.  I’d experienced it before and it wasn’t completely unfamiliar.  The shattered glass on the asphalt next to my car reflected the inner  crashing realization that this was a first for Ben and Alex.

I knew immediately that what had been stolen was their back packs.  We didn’t think twice about taking their back packs with us.  We were going to be right back.  Plus if you lock your car, you’re protecting your belongings, right?  And, who would take something that wasn’t theirs?  Not to mention, break a window to do so.

Of course there’s the actual inventory of belongings, mine and theirs, and I still have to call to make that claim, but the intangible thing that was taken with those back packs is irreplaceable.

I must have said, ‘Sorry you guys; I am SO sorry you guys; you guys, I’m so sorry,’ in a loop at least 3 or 4 times.  Each time I said it a chime sounded, resonating deeper and deeper,  twisting the startling, cold splash to the face reality of how this incident would leave its imprint on them.  Of all the definitions of reality, here’s the one that fits this situation the best: the state of the world as it really is rather than as you might want it to be.

Our last night.  Those fuckers!  They had NO idea what they took with those back packs!  And damned if I was gonna let them lay claim on the week we had just come tumbling out of.

We were frozen there for a while.  Emotions moved through following the trajectory of loss – shock, disbelief, anger, negotiation, acceptance.  When we were wrung out, after the shock waved through and we were all tenderized and raw, we piled our brokenness into my car and drove the short distance back to my house.  Alex was incredulous that we were less than five minutes from my house.  Insult upon injury, how could something so bad happen so close?

Our plan for the evening was tossed out the window.  Some continuity of care was called for, some ceremony, some way to midwife the transition that needed to happen, the shift that needed to take place.  We washed our hands to clean off the dirty feeling.  We lit candles to cast light on the dark, poisonous feelings.  I told them the story Jack Kornfield tells (or maybe it is Pema Chodron, or Cecil Williams, or Michael McGee, or Thich Nhat Hanh – I’m so lucky to have a few good voices in my head) about a couple of POWs returned from war that run into each other years after their release.  One soldier says to the other, ‘Have you forgiven your captors?’  The other soldier replies, ‘Never!’ – clearly still full of vengeance.  The first soldier replies, ‘Then you’re still in prison.’  We talked about how holding onto anger is like a poison in your system.  And we couldn’t let whomever had broken into my car take what we’d just had together over the course of the past week with this one unconscionable, self-serving act.

I grabbed a stash of postcards and told them to pick a card, pick any card, and we wrote down the worst thing about what had happened, the best memory from the week, and the silver lining following the incident, i.e. ‘at least…’  Those cards are sealed in an envelope that will serve as a time capsule for the next ten years.  I’ll be 54 when we open up that envelope!

We wrote down all the bad stuff that we wanted to let go of on a lined piece of paper and we set those pieces of paper to flame using our candles.  The burning papers turned ash were let go into a Tibetan singing bowl.  The fire alarm only went off once, adding some necessary levity and giggles.

Ben purchased a giant Sequoia tree seed germination kit from the gift store at Muir Woods.  He started the germination process at my dining room table, diligently following the instructions on the canister earlier that day or the day before.  The seed is going through a forced winter in my freezer right now.  On July 28th, the seed will emerge into spring on my kitchen windowsill.  I told Ben and Alex that when I root the seed, I will mix in the ash from our burned pieces of paper and the ash will become part of the nutritive soil that will help the tree to grow, compost.  This grounded the geology lessons of the week, the first from the volunteer instructor in Muir Woods, and then the floodplain/mineral rich valleys for vineyards education we’d gotten from Jack on the way to Lake Sonoma along the Dry Creek Valley and past the Warm Springs Dam.

Bittersweet, right?  In the end, the incident and how it was processed served to solidify our time together.  I was no longer the adult in charge, this  shared trauma served to level our playing field.  As Rachel Naomi Remen said during the workshop in May, true service, at its heart, is mutually beneficial.  When you hold yourself apart in the role of care-taker, its empty and hollow.  Real relationship happens between equals.

Alex and Ben have a sweet relationship, they always have.  They share a common language influenced by the games they play and the proximity in which they’ve grown up.  I hope its always so.  All week Ben was the first one to offer to carry a load to or from the car, thoughtful, accommodating, genuinely civic in his tendencies and generous when it came to sharing.  There wasn’t as much evidence of Alex sharing these tendencies throughout the course of the week, and I recognize that Ben and Alex are different people who come from very different households.  Alex is an only child and Ben finds his way in a household of many, there’s a pecking order and accommodation is key.  Alex is more assertive and confident.  The kind of traits that got him to push through any doubts and get up on the surf board in Pacifica the previous day.

On the drive back to my place that last night, after the incident, Alex requested the front seat and there was no contest or question.  The violation of space had clearly shaken him the most.  He’d had that back pack since first grade.  And inside was the blue box that transported whatever his most prized possession of the day happened to be.  I’ve seen that box carry everything from special rocks to Pokemon cards, to matchbox cars, to Transformers, to the gaming device and games that were in it the day it was stolen.

All soft and raw he sat next to me and in the most genuine voice offered to help pay for my broken window.  Holy cannoli, batman.

Time has been swallowed in huge gulps since we last spoke nearly two months ago.  Let’s see what I can sculpt by way of patterns, trajectories, and discoveries from that time.  Please sit back and enjoy the view as we fly over this landscape.  I know you have a choice of carriers and appreciate that you’ve chosen to fly with me.

During a morning walk to work recently my mind was playing the game of figuring.  I love the walks to work for that reason alone.  Past the lake and its many moods; distracted or driven passers-by who don’t make eye contact; the California Bank & Trust that digitally rotates the temp in Celsius, Fahrenheit and the time; and several of my favorite coffee spots en route from home to the office.  Lots of moving pieces, blocks of time, appointments to keep, schedules to coordinate, birthdays and moving on ceremonies to honor; the requirements and responsibilities to maintain memberships and licenses with a variety of organizations while also attempting to achieve some kind of balance between the dailiness of life’s demands and my commitment to a healthier lifestyle, which takes time.  It feels a bit like turning the dial on a combination lock and waiting to hear that satisfying ‘click’ signaling that you’ve been permitted entrance.

There’s been plenty to plan between a 10-day trip back east to visit with family in June and the short span of time that followed that trip before my nephews Ben and Alex visited for nine days.  They just left this past Monday and their absence is still a palpable presence in my very quiet home.  When the kids come to visit in the summers I look forward to it like nothing else, and my life turns upside down in the best way imaginable.  Its always a wild ride to the finish between planned activities, unforeseen opportunities, downtime, and the juicy goodness of getting to know each other better.  Ben, Alex and I had an unscripted and bittersweet opportunity to solidify our experiences together too, but more about that later.

Plans didn’t gel for their trip until very close to the actual arrival on the morning of July 2.  This made me really uneasy.  Locking a few activities into place, finally, got the monkey off my back so that I could breath a little easier.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to make these trips as memorable as possible.  Having lived in the Bay Area for nearly fifteen years (cumulatively, over two tours) the list of places, people, and activities that I’ve grown to cherish is dizzying.  My brother attempted to tell me that the boys would have been just as happy to simply hang out with me, and I know that’s true.  But, that’s just not in my nature.

When we were panning for gold on the Yuba River a week ago yesterday by the little town of Washington, it was obvious that we could have just set up a tent in that very spot for the week and that would have been its own kind of fulfilling.  It was a magical, gorgeous spot. The river was swollen, and cold, with this year’s run-off from an ample snow pack.  Light played on the surface of the water and the constant roar of the river’s passing was the dominant sound.  Our voices only carried to one another if we were within feet of each other.  Ben stayed focused on panning the sand within the same 5 foot stretch of the river’s bank for about 3 hours while Alex explored a stretch of river just on the other side of a crop of boulders, and out of sight.  He carefully chose rocks to build a moat, intermittently measuring the depth of the water that collected with a stick that he’d found.  I toggled back and forth between them, pausing for sun-dappled visits with Doris.  Our location happened to also be a haven for lady bugs.

prospecting

Fortunately Ben and Alex got to meet many of the community of people I am happy to call friends.  Sundaes at the San Francisco Creamery on their first day with Cathy, Andy, Jacob and Ben.  Joyce taught them to fly a kite in Alameda and gave them a surfing lesson in Pacifica.  Jack took us out on his boat for a day on Lake Sonoma.  The boys had the time of their lives being pulled on a tube.

Ethan took us sailing at sunset and treated Ben and Alex like deck hands.

deck hands

We went to a pool party chez Peter, Charles and Betty, and the boys said it was the best pool party they’d ever been to.  We hiked through Muir Woods, got away from the pack and discussed which super powers we’d choose if given the choice.

powering up with the wild trees

hanging loose

They experienced the bounty of a farmers market during summer in California and tasted stone fruits bursting with flavor.  We had grilled buffalo burgers, grilled corn and broccoli one night and homemade calzone another.  We ate a delicious meal at the Old 5 Mile House, compliments of the proprietors, Robert and Doris Smith.  We found a groove together and I trust we built something together that will last the rest of our lives.

I have missed the routine of writing and it feels good to be back.  The pattern and trajectory of this post seems to have taken the shape of a capsule containing some of the more salient memories made recently.  The bittersweet story foreshadowed earlier in this post will be saved for next time.

On the plane home from a work-related conference in Louisville last night, I read journal entries back to October of last year.  I’ve been keeping a journal my whole life.  When I take the time to go back and read what has been recorded, patterns emerge and whatever has been becoming takes shape the way landscapes appear from an airplane.  From the ground my awareness is focused on whatever is in front of me; from the air I can see the convergence of water ways, the patterns of civilization organizing itself around water, and the sprawl into less densely populated patches of agriculture and wilderness. In reading back over the pages, it is possible to trace discoveries, emerging trajectories, the arc of some knowing lifts off the page, becomes more pronounced, and seedling questions take root evolving until new seeds beget new questions in an endless cycle of discovery and becoming.

The arc from October to now started with the smell of memories drifting down the corridors of thought, a recreation of being a child at my paternal grandmother’s home in Brooklyn, early 70s.  The old creaky wooden stairs to the left when you entered from the front stoop, she lived on the lower level.  The bathroom was external to the rest of the apartment and located at the center of the long hallway that smelled and felt so different from our suburban Virginia dwelling.  The entrance to the apartment was at the far end of the hallway, past the bathroom, into the kitchen.

I loved to sit with the adults at the kitchen table and drink soda from tall glasses etched with Grecian, robed women.  The longer we sat, the longer the shadows from the glasses grew.  The details of those conversations are gone, but the cadence and visceral feeling of belonging to something older and bigger remains.

In October I wrote that it was time to start casting my shadow before the sun gets too low in the sky, that my days in October were part hope from the possibility each day held and part melancholy due to a sense of dread that I wouldn’t make the most of it.  Mornings were creating a stir in me and my melancholy was rooted in a frustration that I was not fully realizing what this life was about, that I am no longer in the morning of my life.  This is where the jaded part of me says ‘who cares?’ and the shaman part says step into the power of this knowing and trust that the friction, the stir, the melancholy are all part of the tilling of the soil.

A week ago today I participated in a day-long workshop titled A Life of Service: A Day of Exploration with Frank Ostaseski & Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. It was the perfect book end to the donation process.  In addition to offering lots of new seeds, it provided a container for this whole experience and adventure.  The gem I took away from the workshop was that service is, at its heart, mutually beneficial.  From the way this donation process has pushed me, pulled me, and cracked me open I can vouch for the truth of this new little gem.  As the teachers introduced themselves, Frank stated that service has been his curriculum.  Dr. Remen said that most of the stories about how to live happy and well are about service.  And that stories are a compass to direct you.  She told a story her grandfather used to tell that was his ‘flaming mystic’ interpretation of tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”  It was a beautiful story and in its telling I received another affirmation of one of my longest held beliefs which is that when we turn towards our brokenness and our suffering, instead of away from the pain caused by these things, it is there that we have the opportunity to be made whole.

Dr. Remen went on to articulate that the task of repairing the world is collective and that we all participate in this restoration of the world (this can be extrapolated to any microcosm or macrocosm you like) to its original wholeness not because we are experts, but because we are human.  I heard an invitation to this work towards wholeness from a 17 year old poet the night before at a Youth Speaks semi-final in San Francisco.  His poem talked about his ‘club’ of inclusivity where all the members fight to make this a better land.  I love that teens have been finding Identity. Voice. Power. Imagination. since 1996 in the SF Bay Area and was bummed to miss the Bay Area finals last night, but am looking forward to the national finals this summer.  Thanks to Joyce for dialing me in to this new source of inspiration and faith-building where some truly talented teens compete with poetry to turn their worlds inside out on subjects of identity, race, politics, sexuality, history and more.

In the hours and days that followed the donation process the predominant feeling was a lightness of being.   It was a new sensation and quality of being.  If I were a cookie I would say it was meringue.  And if I were a beverage I would say it was a spritzer.

Physically and biologically, my blood counts were all down as indicated by the post-donation CBC taken by Inja (like Ninja she told me when we first arrived, but without the ‘N’ – and it turned out to be an accurate description of her skills), but not so much that it wasn’t safe for me to re-enter the world outside the doors of Cornell/NY Presbyterian hospital.  Since red blood cells contain hemoglobin, and hemoglobin carries oxygen, this would explain why I got so winded going up one flight of the well-worn marble steps of the NY Public Library’s main branch at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street the following day with Nina.  Nina wanted to share the main reading room on the third floor with me, and I’m so glad she did.  Embarrassing that I had never been there before considering all the years I lived in NY and the two years I attended NYU in the mid-eighties before moving out to SF the first time in ’88.  And now I can say that I’ve been inside the sun-infused quiet room at the top, filled with researchers, tourists and bibliophiles stationed at rows and rows of long tables in that vast open space.

Getting winded was the physical validation confirming that I needed to take it slowly and not push myself.  Gratefully Nina accompanied me on the subway to the Staten Island ferry, then from the Whitehall Ferry Terminal in lower Manhattan to the St. George Ferry Terminal on the other side of the 25-minute crossing carrying one of my bags for every ascent and descent in between.  The added perk, of course, was the extension of time we got to spend together.  Rickie Lee Jones sings you never know when you’re making a memory, but I’m pretty certain one was made that day.  And then I got to spend time with my grandmother (Nanny), aunt, and some cousins through to the next day.  This trip I videotaped a few hours of my grandmother telling her stories to archive the cadence and intonation that have shaped my world for all of my very lucky years thus far.

Moving slowly was not an option immediately following the donation.  Walking through the streets of midtown Manhattan was like moving through a viscous fluid, stilled to the pace of precious and magic.  Petals caught on air currents drifting through shafts of late afternoon light on the path that lead into Central Park had the quality of fairy wings carrying wishes to little girls that still believe.  Moving to the pace of no agenda was delightful.

Emotionally, lightness came by way of knowing that the recipient would receive my stem cells within 24 to 48 hours and the business of re-mapping a healthy immune system would begin for her.  The visual of my stem cells coursing through her body ran something like a grammar school educational video in my mind’s eye.  Happy, excited, eager and full of love and compassion, finding the nooks and crannies and knowing exactly where to go.  A pep rally before the big game.  Also, the sheer experience of having my blood removed and returned to my body six times for hours on end and the bright red mass of it move through an elaborate system of tubes replicating an external cardiovascular system made me a little light-headed.  The nurses were human capsules of anti-anxiety drugs coaching me along for the first hour and a half, and Kenrick even sang Over the Rainbow during one particular twist of discomfort.

Today is my fourth and final acupuncture session scheduled as part of this process.  At the treatment immediately following the donation, Chris said that my pulses surprised him.  He would have expected more depletion but instead my pulses were better than before the donation.  I think this speaks to the spiritual component with respect to the lightness of being.

I’m going to keep blogging.  It’s just too fun to stop.  If you’re around in a year, we’ll get to meet the recipient together, fingers and toes crossed.  Thanks to all the friends and family that have been carrying me on your backs, in your pockets, and in your hearts.  And to the friends that have validated the way I have written about this journey and suggested that I continue, well, there are just no words to express my gratitude for that validation.  But thanks in some mix of pigeon-toed shy little girl looking up, combined with fiercely compassionate, woman-warrior looking out kind of way.

As Ryan says, peace, love and mystery.

Not sure what i want to say…  it went really well, the nurses were fantastic, there were some hiccups getting started, and some discomfort.  They heat up the blood before it is put back into your body, this was an odd sensation and one of many new experiences.   I have never had anything done intravenously.  It took some effort to get the placement of the needles right.  The nurses were remarkable in their ability to appease my curiosity and sooth my concerns. 

It was surreal to see so much of my blood in tubes moving in an elaborate system of extraction and injection.  After a while, watching the tomato soup colored accumulation of stem cells amass over six hours was an experience of ‘are we there yet?’  My left arm needed to be kept straight and warm because the needle in that arm was doing the extracting.  For a while I had to squeeze a squishy ball to get things flowing.  Remarkably this was accomplished minus the requested anti-anxiety drug and during all of the placing of needles.  By the end of the eight hours, I was holding the tubes, checking everything out and ultimately posing for a photo with the bag of my stem cells like it was no big deal.  In the end, it was pretty amazing to see a unit of stem cells and plasma carted off in a cooler to be delivered to the recipient.

Barbara’s companionship, friendship and support fills me with gratitude and delight.  From my arrival at the hotel last night throughout every minute of the process today into a surreal walk in Central Park on this exquisitely beautiful spring day in New York she’s been constant.  Another chapter to our 30+ year friendship.

Walking felt so strange, almost like I was a ghost.  We just took it real slow.  The play of light on blossoms, trees and people in the park was like walking into a painting.

Today was a milestone.  An achievement.  And now the thought goes to the recipient who will receive the cells within 24 – 48 hours.   May the engrafting process go smoothly, her stay in the clean room pass effortlessly, her journey home be happy and safe, and the remaining milestones met without obstacle.

The universe keeps asserting that I still have a choice to bow out of this donation process, even now, the 11th hour and two shots into this adventure and the final countdown.  Friday afternoon this reminder about choice came by way of the doctor that gave me my first shot of Neupogen the previous day.  He called with the perplexing results of my complete blood count (CBC). According to those results my neutrophils (defined in a previous post as the white blood cell that plays Johnny on the spot when there’s an infection to fight) were low to the point that would suggest I myself am more vulnerable to bacteria, even the most common every day bacterias found in the mouth or gut could cause infection when neutrophils dip below the 500 mark.  1,500 neutrophils per microliter of blood is considered the lower end of normal and ‘mine’ registered at 494 from Thursday’s baseline CBC.  If these numbers were true, it would suggest that I myself should be consulting with a hematologist.  And it would also suggest that I would not be a suitable donor for someone who is heavy into radiation and chemo treatments at this very moment.  The doctor that called with this information suggested that I recuse myself from the process.

I went into a complete tailspin.  The grace I spoke about in the previous post went flying out the window, the weight of a feather commandeered by a violent updraft.  How could this be?  I’ve never taken better care of myself than I have this past year, even before this donation was in my world.  And especially these past few months that I’ve been actively committed to this process.  I’ve upped my supplement intake, eaten healthy, drank lots more water, and supported the more subtle energies with acupuncture.  And all of my results have come back on the higher end of normal, until now.

The doctor asked if I’d been given any other drugs, knowingly or otherwise… how about Prednisone?  It couldn’t be that I’d been exposed to the levels of radiation in Japan?  Um, no and definitely no.  He suggested it was as if someone or something was trying to sabotage.

Could it be that the lab made a mistake, said I? It’s a possibility, said he, and certainly plausible given the dramatic about face of these results.  He went on to suggest that I not go through with the process.

This was the equivalent of being given a koan for which there is no logical solution.  Not go through with the process?!  Everything in me swelled into a tidal wave casting a shadow over the shores of his suggestion and I counter offered that another CBC be taken.  And that’s exactly what we did.

I marched, in an out-of-body kind of way, to a lab in Oakland’s Chinatown for one more round of blood work, despite his suggestion that we couldn’t trust the numbers at this point because I’ve got two days of Neupogen in me now which would falsely report the levels of white blood cells.  En route to the lab I phoned my donor work-up point of contact who successfully talked me off the ledge, kept telling me to breath, and asked me not to freak out.  She assured me that the doctors in NY were the experts and would be making the final call.

The phlebotomist at the lab could see I was in distress and asked if I was okay.  I was able to eek out a no before the deluge.   She offered a hug. I accepted.  This 11th hour drill was an invitation to realize that everything in me is in solidarity and saying yes.  The less pretty face of grace.

In the midst of the drill yesterday, Ryan suggested that the perk and opportunity of being awake is that you are given the option to let the traumas move through you and not let them find a place to take up residence amidst the smaller fire drills that make the heart beat quicken.  Like someone trying to escape danger in a suspenseful film and coming up against the dead-end brick wall too high to climb, I could ignore the quickening, go on auto-pilot, get back to the task at hand, and let the trauma find a nice little corner to play pile-on.  Or I could stay awake to the tremor and let it wash through me, filter it kind of like the kidneys filter the impurities from our blood.

During this morning’s acupuncture treatment it took about ten minutes to settle.  It was beyond fantastic that there was that opportunity to dial-it down after the ratcheting up of the past 24 hours.  Lying there and being with the litany of to-dos, betwixt and between, the taffy-making push and pull of doing and being, rising to the surface where all is busy and bubbling, then falling again to the bottom where all is the flow was delicious.  And when I got up off the table everything settled with gravity.  I felt the aches that were promised as the Neupogen started doing its work.  Sharp flashes in my long bones, in my pelvis, my ribs, and chest.

Back at home again the home-health care nurse showed up as planned for today’s shot.  My CBC count came back just fine last night.  The doctor that is part of the Gift of Life team in NY suspects that if the numbers from Thursday’s CBC were true, it has more to do with my being post monthly cycle.  Fortunately I’ve had CBCs done on April 13 and again on April 25, so they’ve got a good picture of a baseline for my normal.  Who knew your neutrophils went surfing the waves of the menses?

Filing out of packed muggy tubes moving strangers from one destination to another on a balmy May day, past the Powell street cable car, through San Francisco’s Union Square shopping and theater district, amidst the silent masses and our desperation to make it to our appointments on time, I made my 9 am appointment to get my first Neupogen shot in an old building on Post street with elevators that hummed and clunked into place.  Two crows sat on the ledge immediately outside of the window of the 7^th story floor, beaks and eyes wide open, peering in the entire time.  Interesting totem animal for the occasion, I couldn’t help myself from looking them up later.  They are found in cultures and mythology all over the world and have been for centuries.  They are also incredibly intelligent, said the doctor who injected the syringe filled with 900 mcg of Neupogen into my anterior left thigh.  All day I’ve pictured my bone marrow producing extra white blood cells like Santa’s elves producing an abundance of toys in the months leading up to Christmas.

Last Friday kicked-off a balmy stretch of summery, sunny days on the east side of the bay.  It’s been a magical backdrop to an already elevated state of awareness.  This is compounded by the container of support that has graced every day for the past few weeks, and most especially the last week.   Time seems to have slowed down to the point that there actually feels like there’s enough of it.  I think this is generally referred to as being present, as in not being in any moment other than the one that you are currently occupying.  It’s yummy, spacious and full of grace.

Ryan and I have been talking about how I can prepare myself to be more present for the actual donation; how to genuinely have the full experience and not just get through it.  He used the word trauma. I buckled.  Trauma to me implies much more drama than what I am experiencing. For instance, a sudden dramatic loss, a car accident, or any other major event that causes body shock.  Ryan defined trauma as any information that causes your central nervous system to respond as though it is responding to a threat, as in, ‘Oh my god, my blood will be drained out of me and put back into me six times over five hours and that freaks me out!’  Just saying or typing that has an impact on me.  So, while I trust the process and the staff and know it will all be just fine, on another level there’s low grade fear running in the background.

During acupuncture treatments this past week that have been administered to promote overall health and integration, the practitioners at Oakland Community Acupuncture have focused particularly on the health of my kidneys.  Last week I noticed that the kidney points were already tender and was curious why this would be so because the donation process hadn’t actually started until today. So I initiated a dialogue during my treatment yesterday.  I learned that in Traditional Chinese Medicine the governing emotion of the kidneys is fear, and the adrenals sit atop the kidneys.  When the adrenals get activated the kidneys aren’t very far away.  Our old brain is never very far away in its response to being chased by the tiger, it’s a choice of flight or fight.  The emotional preparation for this donation and the fear I’ve been running could be the culprits behind the tenderness.

The field of awareness that Ryan is coaching me to focus on is just below my skin, the largest organ of the body, a two-way mirror.  The meditation will be to rest in the chair, feel the fabric of whatever I’m wearing on my leg, the temperature and quality of the air, the preparations for the apheresis process, the sterilization of my skin and the puncture sites.  Any point on the skin is an entrance to the center, to the whole.  Just like a baseball field, a field of wildflowers, or a field of vision – these are all awareness fields.  My task will be to still the awareness, frame by frame, and dial into the expansive matrix of the reality that multiple things are happening simultaneously.  Hold the intention of the best possible outcomes for all and send my compassion for the recipient and her well-being along with my stem cells.

Magic, I learned in Ireland, is being immersed in the fullness of any moment.  The moment that provided this epiphany was on Doon Lake, rowing towards the crumbling walls of an ancient ring fort.  It was like being at the top of the world, drenched in an integrated sense of self in unison with the environment.  A delicious, viscous, savory splendor there on a beautiful lake in County Donegal with a ring fort at the center and an old man that took 5 pounds in exchange for use of his row boat to journey out to the fort, transporting his scrappy, happy dog as part of the deal.  The dog jumped off the boat as soon as we were close enough and scampered around playing experienced tour guide, leading us to entrances and crumbling walls.

The Secret Sits

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

~ Robert Frost

This donation process continues to present insights that underscore, bold or italicize the people, experiences, and moments that make my life matter.  Thanks for sticking with me on the journey.

The news that I was cleared to donate by Cornell came through last Thursday morning.  It’s all systems go for my donation two weeks from today!  Arrangements for my first Neupogen shot in a controlled environment five days before the donation (on May 5), the subsequent home health care for the remaining shots,  and travel plans are underway.

When I went for an acupuncture session on my birthday last month, it dawned on me that it might be interesting to get my acupuncturist’s take on the donation.  He showed a mix of surprise, hesitation, curiosity, and regard before stating that in Chinese medicine it doesn’t get deeper than the bone marrow.  Based on that input, it seemed appropriate to schedule a few sessions before the process and a few restorative sessions after the process.  Ky very generously offered that Oakland Community Acupuncture would be happy to donate four sessions in support of my donation process.  It took a few minutes for me to graciously concede and as of today those appointments are on the calendar.

From the medical model perspective as provided by the nurse practitioner at Cornell, my platelet count will drop after the donation and should return to normal within 48 hours.  During those 48 hours they recommend no interactive sports or activities such as shaving because platelets are the clotting factor.  From my non-medical model perspective and forays into alternative medicine, if this body is going to fly round trip across the country in less than a week to sit in a chair for five hours so that the extra stem cells/white blood cells produced by the Neupogen can be harvested, why not promote the return to normal with a little life force, or qi, stimulation?

Despite these overtures of advocacy and increased awareness to safeguard my health, the tendency to minimize this donation process lingers like a little yappy dog in my consciousness, yipping things such as, ‘Really, it’s no big deal.  You’re just being overly sensitive, too emotional.  This can be attributed to your superpowers at making something out of nothing.’

This tendency to minimize stems from a niggling belief that I never do enough.  While discussing this twisted dilemma during a meander through a museum the other night with my new friend Ryan, he commented that the belief is rooted in an underlying feeling of inadequacy.

An article in a magazine titled Artful Blogging featured a website titled ‘i am enough‘ initiated by Tracey Clark.  This site is devoted to stories submitted by women who share this malady, and there are enough entries to indicate that this belief is not uncommon.  What does it look like when you start from a foundation of not being enough?  I have my suspicions regarding the origins of this belief in my life, and how and why it has the power to undo me, still.  Beyond that, it is intriguing to consider the static created during the internal decision making process when the choice at hand weighs the benefits for self versus others. What does ‘to thine own self be true’ mean in that arena.  An old friend suggested that the friction generated by the place where these decisions are made is the place where spirituality is practiced.   And another friend that was in touch last week after reading the four entries prior to this one said that it made her think of a quote she’d heard, as follows:  ‘Why are we here?  We are here for each other.’  I like that.

On that note, here’s a great link my stepmother sent me today and an invitation: 100K Cheeks: 6 Degrees Challenge

The results of my blood work were due to be complete within 72 hours.  That would have been the middle of the day this past Saturday.  Do labs have off on the weekends?  Does the 72 hours begin the morning of the following business day?  Are other things more pressing?  Has something come up with the recipient?  Did something turn up in the tests?

As I said in Post Number One, there began the questions, the symmetries, soul-searching, and ultimately, the resolution to go through with the process.  I also said that faith and trust weren’t my strong suits.  What a great way to practice.

So while the results of the tests are not in, I’ll talk about the resolution to go through with the process, and the title of this blog, still small voice.

While driving north to Del Norte County, land of the big trees mentioned previously, I spoke with a new friend I met at a Rosen Intensive in December 2010.  Subsequently, he invited me to do the Artist’s Way with him, a 12-week course developed by Julia Cameron offered in book format.  He and I kept in touch on a weekly basis to discuss each week’s concept and related tasks.  This became a transformative vehicle to solidify our new friendship.  And, I have confidence that the outcomes of the Artist’s Way will continue to manifest for some time to come.

During the drive I told him about the donation process, and kept reinforcing that I was committed.  He listened for quite some time before he reflected that he kept hearing how committed I was, but he wasn’t hearing ‘me’.  The ‘me’ that was underneath the recovery process afforded by The Artist’s Way, the one that is my advocate and ally, and he invited me to take the following week to still my conversation with others, and to listen for that voice.  A road trip through the wild weather of northern California was the perfect backdrop for this quest.

For most of the driving, I was pretty unconscious.  Indulging in sweet, crunchy, salty snacks while listening to a constant stream of music was a pretty good technique to keep the still small voice buried.  But on the twisty, hair pin turns along Highway 1 south from Willits to Fort Bragg in Mendocino County after days of constant rain, driving over and past swollen, muddy rivers, and mini-mudslides everywhere I decided to turn off the music and stop pushing down the emotions underneath my sweet tooth.  And I listened.  Arriving at the Mendocino coastline, I stopped at a vista point and watched the wild seas, full, on overload and overwhelm.  Something shifted.

Ultimately, the decision to proceed was selfish.  If I needed a transplant, or someone I loved needed a transplant, I’d want there to be a complete stranger out there that was willing to go through with the donation process.  My choice to go through with the process is actually waking me up to the life that I have.  That I have an option to help save someone’s life because I am healthy enough to do so is a gift.

And on the topic of symmetry, or maybe it is synchronicity still emanating from the Artist’s Way, this past weekend I attended a workshop titled Being Present to collect 12 continuing education units towards maintenance of my national massage license certification.  This workshop was the annual meeting of the Sensory Awareness Foundation which is work started by Charlotte Selver and Charles V.W. Brooks.

The attendees at the workshop were pretty attuned to the business at hand, a.k.a. being more fully alive to the moment.  Including a subset of people that happen to be neighbors in Oakland, and new friends.  Since meeting on Saturday, we’ve hung out Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon and tonight for dinner.

One of my new friends happens to be a feat of modern science, and one of the brightest spirits I have ever met.  He had non-Hodgkin lymphoma at age 4 during a time when it was so rare that his doctors didn’t know what it was.  The only way they could make this determination and figure out how to treat him was to do multiple spinal taps and send the draws to a center with the resources to do an informed analysis.  He ended up having such severe radiation treatments that it actually caused him to lose his sight, amongst other side effects, at age 4.

He has had one hell of a ride and there’s not one ounce of victim in him that I can tell.  In fact, he’s full of energy and advocacy and on the brink of starting an organization to bring awareness to the reality of being a non-sighted person in the United States where there are 20 million non-sighted people and only 35% of them are employed.  Not because they don’t want to be, but because there’s no commerce in it.   He wants to change that.

There were many elements that contributed to his survival, including two bone marrow transplants.  I’m so glad that he had a match so that he was around for me to meet him 27 years later.

There’s a lot of detail in the Post Number 2 narrative below, so I just wanted to succinctly note that I am fine and actually really, really happy.

My experience at Cornell, including the care and treatment I received from the genuinely respectful, knowledgeable, and capable team of professionals gave way to a sense of resolve.  Much more settled about the decision to go through the process, understanding the very minimal risks, having had the opportunity to see the facility, knowing what the recipient will also go through, and knowing that I have an amazingly supportive community including an old friend who accompanied me to the exam and an older friend who will hang out with me through the apheresis process makes it easier to be brave after being good and scared (thanks for that Sandy).

Here’s a daily installment of my faith building exercise for your reading pleasure, as said by Goethe, “Boldness has Genius.“