Faith

A Eulogy

Two years ago, when my mother was eighty-five, she required major surgery for the ovarian cancer that led to her death. She came through the operation amazingly well – she was awake and alert within hours. But, after being discharged home from the hospital she developed a 'post-op ileus,’ which meant her gut stopped working and just stood paralyzed. This is why doctors always ask if you've 'passed gas' after surgery. (Which she hadn't by the way, a result of the quick discharges encouraged by our broken health care system; but don't get me started...)

The ileus caused her hours of unrelenting nausea and vomiting, a type of suffering I wouldn't wish on anyone. My two sisters and I cared for her, and each other, as best we could. First we unpacked, quickly and quietly, then set up the bedside commode designed to minimize pain from her three-day-old, seven inch wound. While one ate (in the hallway outside of Mom’s apartment, so we wouldn’t make her nausea worse) another dropped homeopathic remedies under her tongue, and the third delicately massaged her belly to help her gut start working again. We taped a sign on her door so her many caring neighbors would know she was home, but not well enough for visitors. We even went shopping for something, anything that might help - prune juice, antacids, laxatives.

Between the waves of nausea Mom tried to rest, but when they came she moaned - with an occasional “Oh honey.” At these times we all stopped what we were doing to attend to her. We had an assembly line to deliver clean moist cloths and basins, and were always at the ready for the next episode. It was the least we could do after the many years of her tending to us. Eight hours and two calls to the doctor later, we were told to take her back to the hospital.

As Mom sat in a straight back chair outside of her bathroom, pale and weak, we ran around like squirrels repacking and preparing for the 45-minute car ride. Once everything was set in the apartment, washcloths and basins ready, we slowly walked her to the elevator. She experienced a particularly bad episode of retching just before getting in. On the way down, she moaned "Oh, God, please help me" and leaned her head onto mine. I gave her a gentle hug. The elevator door opened and we walked her towards the curb, a daughter on each side and the third with the car ready.
Mom stopped on the sidewalk and announced, "I am passing gas…"
"Really?" we said, shocked and excited.
"Yes," she smiled, amused at our astonishment, "and it’s a good one!"

And, by God, that resolved her symptoms! We still climbed into the car but with the nausea gone we talked and laughed during the ride to the hospital. Mom was readmitted, but for only a brief stay.

For years we kidded my mother about her ‘direct connection’ to God. She sat in conversation with Him every morning. She thanked Him for all the good in her life, her health, her wonderful new ‘independent living’ community, she even thanked Him for my hands (I am blessed to be able to attend births for a living). Then she ran her list, asking God to keep people, so many people, in His care. Of course this included her children, her grand and great-grandchildren. But it also included our in-laws, her priest, my sister’s house cleaners, my son’s teachers, people on drugs, the president, the soldiers. The list went on and on; if you’ve met her, and certainly if you’re here today, she’s probably said a prayer for you, too. She did this every single day, although, she did tell me once that if she was ill, she’d cut it short saying, “…and You know the rest.”

In all the years of knowing this, I was never so close, so present for it - the simple yet genuine “…please help me” prayer in the elevator, answered moments later. When my sister acknowledged how hard it was to bear so much discomfort, Mom replied simply, “Well, we do have to suffer some on this earth.”

She had a way of leaning on her god, asking for help (usually for others) but, and this is the key, she was always willing to accept what she could not change. It wasn’t easy but it’s how she got through everything life handed her over her 87 years.

Accepting what is… We’re going to need that to get through what life hands us without her here to cheer us on and keep us in her prayers.

Lessons of the Pie Crust

LESSONS OF THE PIE CRUST

Everyone loves a fresh baked pie, especially the buttery crunch of the crust. In our family, we would fight over an orphan piece of crust, the six of us, and our Dad, who taught us this appreciation.

Once, when I was about ten and sweetly unaware of the life pressures that prevented Mom from finishing a pie, she let me, well, my sister, Theresa, and me, eat a whole crust! We had smelled the golden treat baking two days before in the kitchen of our Baltimore row house. Small and simple, the kitchen had a table with only three chairs, but a large window with a swag curtain that gave Mom easy access to holler us home from the alley, or yell, “Donna, tie your brother’s shoe.” Of course, once we knew she was watching, we’d holler back, “Hey Mom, look at me.”

I had watched my mother flip and gently press the tender dough on the Formica counter. She sprinkled white flour like fairy dust and rolled her pin this way and that, ball bearings jiggling with each new run. Once it was thin and round, she flopped it into the glass pie dish and tucked in the unruly edges. Then she fluted it into a perfect zigzag, a skill she’d eventually teach to all of us, and to our kids. After a quick rinse of her hands and a swipe on her apron, she tapped fork holes, just so, all along the bottom. “So it can breathe,” she said as she popped it into the oven for the pastry gods to bless.

The rich aroma filled the house, but Mom never finished it. No strawberries, no apples. No can of pumpkin in sight.
“When will it be ready?” we whined after the golden brown pie shell sat on the white corner cabinet for two days. It begged to be eaten, and we begged back.
Mom stopped sorting laundry, pushed a loose hairpin back into her dark French twist and pleaded, “Please, girls,”

What was it, I wonder now, that prevented her from finishing? I asked her once - was it the endless financial pressures? Was it the time my older sister one almost eloped? Or when another wrecked the company car? Or, perhaps it was when the youngest, a dog lover, was attacked in a neighbor’s yard because he didn’t (or maybe couldn’t?) read “Beware of Dog”?

She didn’t remember. And it was not likely to have been one of those memorable events, it is more apt to have been the everyday heaviness of life … running the household on a shoestring; raising six children, polite and nice but self-centered and full of their own angst; or attending to a neighbor’s need.

I guess life can simply get in the way of itself. She couldn’t fit in finishing a pie, and couldn’t see when she might.

So, two days after she baked that crust, while Theresa and I did our homework at the kitchen table Mom peered over at us from her sink full of dishes. Before I could assure her, “I am so doing my homework,” she asked, “Would you two like to eat that crust?”
Our eyes lit up. “Yeah!” we said in unison.
“Oh, go on and eat it,” she said. I can almost see her smile as she returned to her work -- barely a break in the rhythm.

Oh, we were thrilled! We began to gobble it up quickly. After all, things in our family were never given without methodical division. And we knew someone could walk in any minute wanting to share a piece. The first bites tasted scrumptious and melted in our mouths. But as it disappeared we became uncharacteristically generous.
“You finish it,” Theresa said.
“No, you can have the rest.” I said, and wandered away from the table.

It’s taken me fifty-some years to realize just how many lessons I learned from that simple experience. For one, the crust tasted good because of the contrast it offered the filling -- without the filling the pie lost its balance - all yin and no yang. And “special” presumes limited opportunity. While eating the whole thing felt special, and memorable, the crust itself ceased to be. I ate most of it, of course, but deep down I began to see just how small of a jump it is from not quite enough, to far too much. But most of all, and I might say, best of all, I began to recognize that it was my mother’s attention that was the real gift.

So now - especially now - I find myself deeply grateful that we had so many days with fewer burdens. Days, when, after a meal with meatloaf and mashed potatoes, she could present us with a fragrant, fully baked pie to fight over.

Fiction

I’ve written a piece of fiction.

And now I feel like a little kid who just got a new bike. Not any new bike, but one I’ve built - with my own hands. It’s a simple bike, no gears or fancy hardware, but it works. I’m totally psyched. The pedals make the wheels turn and the handlebar allows me to go around in a circle between boxes in the basement. A thing of beauty. I’ve even named it, and the name incorporates its essence: complex mechanics, potential energy, my ticket to ride.

But … what will happen when I go outside with it? Will the brakes work when I’m going down a hill? What about bumps at high speed? Will it hold up?

I’ll find out tomorrow when my classmates put it through the “workshop” process. And, of course, I’ll post it on my blog if it passes inspection.

The Yearling, A Review

I was never much of a reader. My parents weren’t highly educated. Mom made it to eighth grade and Dad through high school, and then they met, had six kids and no money. Reading was low on their priority list. It doesn’t explain my lack of reading completely though, because one of my sisters reads like a madwoman. I guess I never had much interest, plus, I’m a slow and deliberate reader and can’t seem to sit for long periods at a time What I did read as an adolescent was teen romance magazines. Oh, the drama, the longing, the love … it was all I needed - on a single page. But, whole books? Unlikely. And the classics? Never.

The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was my assigned precursor for what is now termed Young Adult Literature and it took me three solid days - all of Labor Day weekend minus a movie here and a breakfast there - to get through it. Difficult? yes, but worth it. The Yearling was a long, luxurious meander through a year in the backwoods of Florida in the early 1900’s. Thematically a coming-of-age book, Ms. Rawlings skillfully intertwined setting and character development to give us a glimpse into the rough and laborious entanglement between the natural world and the Baxter family. Respectful encounters as well as intense struggles with the earth and its animals allowed the reader an intimate view of the rambunctious, animal-loving protagonist, Jody, and his kind-hearted (what we would now call) naturalist father, Penny.

There wasn’t an overarching plot per se, and so, for me at least, there was not a strong drive to read on for most of the book. It was more like a series of plots, popcorn plots, little arcs of drama as Jody and Penny would go on a hunt for large or small game, or deal with severe weather or an animal intruder, or even just go off together to haul water for the family. Conflicts came up within his family, with other families- like the family of brutes nearby who lacked the spirit and knowledge of Penny, or within Jody himself as he wrestled with his own conscience, a common theme in young adult literature. But, these issues were usually resolved within a page or two.

However, these experiences built on one another to form a foundation for a final, more intense, set of conflicts/plot found in the last few chapters. It was here that the drive to read on picked up. One minor plot was a feud between two of Jody’s older friends over, naturally, a girl. Jody had to repeatedly decide with whom to place his allegiance until one started the other's house afire. This brought both the best and the worst in human nature into clear focus for Jody. The major plot (which was a little long in coming, in my opinion) peaked when his adopted and beloved fawn, Flag, had to be killed to prevent him from eating any more of the food on the family farm than he already had. This was a great challenge for Jody and it was magnified, another common theme in young adult literature, by the fact that he blamed it on his parents, who, in Jody’s mind, couldn’t possibly know what was right, let alone understand his perspective. So, of course, he had to run away, during which time he faced discomfort and danger.After he cried and starved out his grief over the loss of Flag, who he actually had to shoot after his mother’s poor aim only wounded the animal, he realized how much he missed his home and loved his parents. He returned with a clearer understanding of the meaning of, and a willingness to take on, a more grown-up role in the family. If this wasn’t a precursor, I’d suggest it was all just a little too, well, cliché.

The language and use of dialogue was my favorite part of the book. Ms. Rawlings used specific and accurate dialect and historically interesting words, both of which helped to develop both the setting and the characters. For example, Jody had spent all day building a pen to house Flag, his new fawn, so Flag wouldn’t continue to eat the growing potatoes. Flag jumped out of it as soon as he was placed there and Jody started to cry. Penny said, “Don’t git in a swivet* boy. We’ll work this out, one way or t’other. Now the ‘taters is near about the only thing he’ll bother, do you keep him outen the house. They’d ought to be under kiver anyway. Now you just take down that tipply-tumbly pen, and build a coop to kiver the ‘taters.” (*A swivet is a flustered or agitated state.)

Ms. Rawlings made delightful and abundant use of metaphor, most of which referred to how nature can represent the common relationships and situations in life. About half way through the book, Jody finds his fawn, Flag, and he’s surprised that Flag had stayed put after his mother had been killed. Jody said to Penny, “Pa, he wa’n’t skeert o’ me. He were layin’ up right where his mammy had made his bed.” Penny responded by saying, “The does learns ‘em that, time they’re borned. You kin step on a fawn, times, they lay so still.” I think this can be interpreted as part of the human condition, one Jody discovers by the end of the book, that none of us, ultimately, stray very far (at least, emotionally) from where (how) we were raised.

The Yearling was first published in 1938 toward the end of a lengthy economic depression in this country. It’s not surprising then, that the author held in high regard a poor family who made way in the world solely on the land. And the role of women could be appreciated in the historical perspective as well -- primarily good or bad -- wife and mother or “one of them leetle chipperdales”. While not originally from the rural woods of Florida it is clear that once Ms. Rawlings moved there she studied in detail the local people and culture in order to bring it so alive in her writing. She won the Pulitzer Prize for the Yearling in 1939.

As for me, I’m grateful to have one of the classics under my belt. The slow pace, use of metaphor, and detailed description of place will all be useful for my own writing. And I will not soon forget the back woods life in Florida or the wonderful characters, especially Jody with his new grasp of animal and human nature and (maybe even more so) his patient and loving father, Penny. I enjoyed this so much, not in the reading of it necessarily, but in the having read it, that I find myself looking forward to reading other “classic” books of young adult literature. Huck Fin, here I come.

Not Just Yet

Nectar leaks slowly from the dark red center of each waxy Hoya bloom this morning. The large old plant sits in my sunroom, in front of the sliding glass door that leads out to the second story deck where the birds await their seed and the grill needs to be cleaned from last night’s chicken dinner. The sun breaks through the branches of the tall maple and lends the deck and the sunroom the feel of nature, unusual this close to the city. I write here in the mornings, kicked back in a yellow flowered recliner with my laptop and a cup of coffee. But, in truth, I haven’t written for quite awhile. My last blog was four months ago - that’s a long dry spell. Of course, I have all the right reasons: real life gets in the way; I lack inspiration; my inner critic is winning … the usual.

Today, I will start here, with the Hoya. A cutting from my mother’s plant, it is a vine with deep green leaves that wind round and round the handle of the basket that holds its pot-bound roots. The rich fragrance reaches as far as the kitchen, but only in the evenings and only when it blooms, which is rare. I’ve had this plant for over ten years but found my first bloom just two years ago. That it blooms at all is the envy of my sister, Kathy. She waters hers religiously and keeps it in a good spot, but, still, it never blooms.

The drops of nectar can last for days and this morning they appear like tears. Perhaps they’re for my mother – she’s eighty seven and has ovarian cancer. She’s endured multiple bouts of chemo but is now ready to say ‘enough’. I’m proud of her for choosing that path now, at a time when she’s still up and around. She’s able to walk to the dining room and does chair-exercise every day at her independent living center. Still, she depends heavily on Kathy, the sister who lives nearest to her, making it all the more unfair that it’s Kathy’s Hoya plant that won’t bloom.

I wonder what’s next for my mother – in all likelihood it will be a steady loss of function and friends. Already, I’ve watched in awe as she’s incorporated the deaths of many whom she’s loved - three in the past month alone. One of her chemotherapy agents has made her already thin skin exquisitely sensitive to heat so she rarely bakes her loving gifts of apple pie or strawberry cake anymore. Her day-to-day memory is diminishing along with any hope of watching her great-grandchildren grow to maturity, including my own son’s newborn daughter. And every day she deals with dizziness and pain, abdominal swelling that requires periodic needle taps, and of course, the foreboding loss of appetite … even for ice cream.

I can barely stand it. But she can, and does – with grace. How she does that is my question. She is Catholic and her faith in God is strong, so that helps, but it’s more than that. Her ability to accept what comes her way would impress the most devout Zen Buddhist. Honestly, she counts herself as extremely lucky. Where I see that she grew up poor and without parents, she’s grateful that her older sister and brother kept the family together and “raised ‘em up right”. Despite the deaths of her granddaughter in a house fire and her daughter from Hepatitis C, she sees only her five remaining children and multiple grand- and great grandchildren who are healthy and happy. And there are times that I wonder how she can live another day without her life-long love and best friend, a man who was kind and smart and fun, who took care of many of the details of living. She tells me not to worry; he’s holding a spot for her in heaven. He promised.

So, while I watch her stare down the throat of death, she simply smiles and taps it nonchalantly on the cheek and says, “OK ... but not just yet”.

And me? I stand next to the Hoya plant and swirl in my own discontent. The litany seems long this morning but on top is the impending loss of my mother and my own lack of direction: I’m fifty-four, my life is half over; I’ve changed my career path so I can write, but I’m not writing. What am I doing?

The clear and tenacious nectar simply waits for me. Finally, I touch a drop from one of the waxy blooms and ask the universe - the vague godlike energy of truth and love and nature - to help me find and be the best of me. Aiming for what I vaguely understand to be my chakra energy points, I rub cool fluid between my thumb and middle finger above my head, to remind me that I’m connected to everything and inspiration and comfort are available. I place another drop on my forehead to pull out trust in my own intuition, a third on my lips and throat so I may cut through fear and ego to communicate a respectful truth. I note the hint of sweetness and take a few slow breaths before I place a fourth drop on my heart to remind me to both nestle and release the gift of love. The next drop goes on my skin at the level of my adrenals, my solar plexus, for the energy and the stamina to take on whatever life offers. I linger here long enough to notice the fluid gets sticky as it dries and I know I’ll have little reminders of this blessing all day. Two drops are left. The first of these I rub onto on my lower belly, near my ovaries, to draw out creativity and openness to the new and sensual, and then, warmed by the dappled sunlight and an inner calm, I aim the final drop for the base of my spine as I sense myself connected to the earth, whole, and, in fact, exactly where I need to be.

There, I am blessed. Not by the Catholic God my mother loves, but no less so. It’s different, I know, and in a future blog, I’ll detail my connection with spirituality through nature. But in this moment I’ll simply notice that I feel shored up, more able to emulate my mother’s resilience, at peace with my place in the world. I can wait for the blooms and will breathe in their intoxicating fragrance when I can.

As for today, I’ll upload this writing to my blog, despite its imperfections; and then, after I feed the birds and clean the grill, I’ll email my sister, Kathy, to share what I’ve learned about the Hoya plant while writing this – turns out a long dry spell between watering will actually increase the chance of a bloom.

Upload revision 9-28-09

Essay for Application to Chatham University MFA in Creative Writing

..................................................


Writing. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was doing it for the attention. I suspect I didn’t get enough as a child. Don’t get me wrong my parents were great. Best ever, I’d be willing to wager, the kind you just want more of. But, just as it’s said to a woman having her third child -- take care when the new one arrives, as you will be out of lap room--by the time I came along, fourth in a family of six, five girls and the youngest, a boy, I guess I was left hanging onto my mother’s left leg. My younger sister must have been stuck with … an elbow, maybe. And baby brother? Well, for some reason he ended up with a spot on her lap just the same.

The first time this shortfall of attention hit me was during an evening meal when I was eight. We lived in a row house half way up the hill on Limit Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland. A wide sloping alley connected the back yards of everyone we knew and loved. From her kitchen window my mother could respond to, “Hey, Mom, watch this!” no matter whose yard we were in.

Our dining room looked the same every night of the week. Patty, our little green parakeet stood chirping in her cage in the corner. Dad sat at the end nearest the window next to Theresa - the middle child and his favorite. Mom and baby brother Jack, or “Jackie,” as we called him until he begged us not to, were at the end closest the kitchen so Mom could jump up and down a dozen times during meals. On either side an older sister sat next to a younger one - Kathy along side Donna and Eileen next to me. Everyone who needed it had someone to cut his or her meat.

Dinnertime, for the most part, was lively and warm. Everyone chimed in. I can’t recall everything we chattered on about, but I know it was competitive, each one trying to hold the floor a little longer than another, or even better, get a good laugh out of the rest. This included my father, who usually won.

This particular evening I had been trying my darndest to tell everyone something special about my second grade day but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So I huffed and I puffed and I finally screamed: “No one ever pays any attention to me!” and slammed my fork into my pile of peas. I stood up with gusto, my chair would have tumbled to the floor behind me had there been room. I stomped off through the kitchen and as I rounded the bend at the big white fridge with my final, “I’m running away!” I turned to see necks craned and forks frozen in space.

I’m sure my parents glanced knowingly at one another - possibly amused, and, I’d like to think, a tiny bit guilty, before my mother calmly placed her napkin on the table and said, "Kathleen, keep an eye on your brother," then excused herself to come help me pack.


Forty-six years later, with a child of my own and a successful practice in family medicine, I’m no longer stomping off when people don’t listen to me. But, I've recently weathered a brief but serious bout of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which included a run-in with an unsympathetic legal system. Soon after, I decided to take writing classes at Chatham University to help me to make a coherent narrative out the months of journal entries I had been keeping during that process. There, I found that I had a reasonable ability to write in prose form, including scene and dialogue (though I feel my real strength as a writer may be my ability to be honest).

Thus, I’ve decided to officially apply to the MFA program. I see Chatham as a place where I can not only backfill the educational deficits left from a career focused on science and medicine, but also further my writing with guidance (and deadlines) from the extraordinary faculty in the MFA Department. And by majoring in Creative Nonfiction I hope to learn how best to interest, and possibly educate, readers in the little understood concept of small-t-trauma, PtSD, if you will – as when a life that is humming along gets interrupted, rerouted to an entirely new landscape, by an experience that might otherwise be viewed as minor.

Am I doing this for the attention? So my voice can be heard, without interruption, until a complete thought is expressed? Perhaps. My family forgave my dramatic trip to the front step, which was as far as I ventured. I returned to be folded among them like a sheet still warm from the dryer. But maybe it’s time I let go, finally, of my mother’s left leg. To venture beyond my own back yard. To harvest from my own life the time and focus I need to tell the story of an imperfect life and follow through with my passion to write, and, if the stars line up just right, publish, my memoir...

(Hey, Mom, watch this!)

.

fears and dreams

.

Monday morning blues. Let them be brief...

--My son turned18 yesterday. He and his girlfriend and their babygirl came over for bagels and chocolate pudding pie. We gave him four new tires, how’s that for symbolic? See ya. Stay safe.
--I have a disappointing resurgence of an irritating and mildly debilitating injury. I have nursed it along, including thrice weekly rehab, since January.
--This past weekend I retreated with other faculty from my family medicine residency program. Our annual event. The group has been stable for over 15 years. We’ve recently lost two to retirement and by next fall will have two new members.
--My mother’s cancer chemical number is rising, ovarian. I just loved every minute (even the hard minutes) that I spent with her on her recent two-week visit here.
--I am heavily involved, hours a day, in writing my final for Memoir Class. I am trying to show how it was to be me during the early reaction phase from an indecent sexual assault that occurred in 2007. Not to tell, mind you, and not to summarize! for god’s sake, but to show my life in reaction, acutely and realistically – so the reader can live it on the page. Again and again, until I get it right.
--I have a card sitting on my kitchen table. It tells me I missed certified mail and need to pick it up. It’s hot. Scary. It is from the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Body Work, NCBTMB. I sent in a formal complaint about the sexual assault in late 2007. They took my statement by conference call six months ago. I’ve been waiting for the determination. It’s here; I just need to take that card to the post office this morning to find out whom they believe in this ongoing He said-She said saga.

Is it any wonder then, that I had a dream last night that I was under dark murky water, alone and scared? Or that once my feet hit bottom it was heaped up with dead bodies? Men mostly, middle aged and bald, or shaved with growing stubble, naked and muscular, buoyant somehow when I had to kick off of them to get back to the surface. I woke up in a start with palpitations and a long and intense hot flash.

I took an antacid and wandered reluctantly back to dreamland as the trees outside swayed noisily in the wind and the rain dripped down my window.