Grace follows Sadhana

Each of the past eleven mornings, I've read one poem by Mary Oliver. Just one from her "Why I Wake Early."

I find that eating just one at a time allows me to really savor the flavor, take the rhythm of that one poem in and really hear it, let it echo for a day. It helps that each poem is a gem, this morning's "Have You Seen Blacksnake Swimming?" closing with the image of the snake's "usual gentleman's smile." Each one makes me want to jump around, reminds me to go outside and soak it in.

The theme in yoga yesterday was that "grace follows sadhana." Practice, devotion, commitment brings grace in its wake. This fits in so well with the recent focus on resolution as the year comes to a close and a fresh opportunity presents itself.

But also it puts me in mind of Mary Oliver. Each of these delicious poems I am enjoying in the mornings is the result of so much devotion and singular focus, that shining bit of grace on the page no accident but the happy consequence of a poet's constancy in pursuit of her vision.

Cycle 3, Day 14: Savoring This Sweetness

Joe bounced back late last week and has been feeling great. He rode Saturday and Sunday -- ok, not as long as usual or as fast -- but chemo be damned, he was out there. We had a sweet, low-key weekend of hanging out at home, capped by some bowling for Laurent's birthday. Just so nice. So far this is how it goes: 10 days crappy, 11 days good. Ok, we can handle it.

We're really savoring this time, these 7 remaining healthy, comfortable days before we start the whole damn thing over again. The next chemo will be the day before Thanksgiving, but the good news is that it'll be chemo #4, so we'll have passed the half-way mark. Yeah! And so that chemo doesn't ruin the holiday, we'll be having Thanksgiving early at Joe's parents, the night before the treatment. More nice.

On the 30th we go back for another PET scan, to confirm what we are sure is the case: that the Potato and all the other little tubers are GONE, destroyed, evaporated. That'll be such a relief, to see proof that all of this chemical warfare we've been waging on poor Joe's body has been worth it.

Right now just savoring how free of misery Joe is: no nausea, no pain, no shots, no pills, just his usual sunny self, light and strong.

Cancer, chemo, bla bla bla: November is so much bigger than that!

As a wonderful distraction from all of the present-day chemo crap we've been dealing with, I've had the delightful fall-back of my usual November nostalgia, something that tends to take me over every year as Laurent's birthday approaches. In this photo, I am probably just barely 25, Laurent a few months old, still in his delightful harp-seal incarnation.

It used to be that I would look back on my pregnancy with so much compassion for what I went through. I loved Laurent, even in utero, with a ferocity that has never abated. But at the same time, I was miserable, broken-hearted, lonely, as I went through most of that time either abandoned by my then-partner, waiting for his return or waiting for another abrupt disappearance. I loved being pregnant, loved the feeling of it, the cozy shelf my gigantic belly created for my arms. I didn't love the hokey-pokey with the biological dad that consumed those months, as he tried to make a decision without making a decision.

I was luckier. My decision was made: Laurent was happening, growing to the mammoth 9 pounds he would be at birth, best and most powerful experience of my young adult life. After twelve hours of natural labor on November 15, 1987, our midwife Holly delivered Laurent into a patch of sunlight illuminating the bed and we beheld this remarkable creature. Glorious.

That day was hard, so painful, so fascinating in its total consumption of me -- no thoughts, nothing but presence inside a mighty unimaginable pain. I look back now on that day less with compassion than with awe - at my own courage, at my own insistence on feeling every bit of what was happening to me, at my embrace of motherhood, even on my own, even at my age, no matter what it would require.

Every year at this time I am filled with memories and with gratitude. I re-feel some shadow of the labor, keep time to remembered contractions for a long stretch of time, until 2:16 pm, when finally, finally, I meet my child face to face. And therein lies the gratitude: gratitude to the 24-year-old me who chose this path, gratitude to to my family who were there every step of the way, mostly gratitude to Laurent himself, who continues to dazzle me just as much now as at the beginning.

Cycle 3, Day 9: Woe and Courage

I've been remiss in describing the first week + of this last treatment, so this is going to be a longish post.

Based on our experience with the first two rounds (Joe felt crappy but still worked and rode his bike), I think we mistakenly believed that we would skate through Chemo, trip lightly through this landscape of poison and side effects. To say we've had a rude awakening is understatement. The last 8 days have been very hard, 1 in particular was the hardest day we've lived through in our more than 20 years together. And throughout, we are cataloging Joe's symptoms, something which is challenging for us even in the best of times.

Way back when, I used to joke about keeping a calendar of Joe's ailments, what happened to him at work or on the bike. For a month or so in the late 90s, I actually did mark everything down and we'd laugh about it. Little did we know what good practice that would be for Right Now. Honestly, up til August of this year, there was already PLENTY to remember, mostly bike-related: crashing, getting doored or hit by cars, breaking helmets with the force of impact, hitting deer, breaking bones, scraping off knuckles, leaving behind large swaths of epidermis on roadways throughout Northern California. There is so much more, I'm sure, but I can't remember it all.

So I'm grateful that since Chemo #3 Joe has been keeping a daily record of how he's feeling. I share it here, his telegraphic Litany of Woe.

Day 1: 3rd Chemo, out at 1pm, got hiccups at 2pm (lasted, on and off, until 10pm), a bit sleepy, numb fingertips. 8pm: headache, weak, nausea.

Day 2: Woke at 1am, nauseous. Fingertips not as numb as yesterday. Still nauseous at 7am. Nauseous all day. Hiccups on and off. Constipated.

Day 3: Feeling foggy at 7am, right fingertips numb, a little nausea. Constipated.

Day 4: Only a few hours sleep, nausea, headache, numb fingertips. I don't think sleeping sitting up helps with the nausea. Numb lips. Constipated.

Day 5: Depressed. Numb lips and right fingertips. Constipated.

Day 6: Numb lips and fingertips. Back pain. Constipated.

Day 7: Same as Day 6, more back pain, slight cold. No longer constipated. [Thank you, Dieters Drink. Man, does that work!]

Day 8: All of the above, weakness, diarrhea, bad back pain.

Day 9: All of the above, constipation returns.

Looking back on all of it, the impact of the meds is clear: the Prednisone Days 2 - 6 gave us Depressed on Day 5, the Neulasta shot on Day 2 gave us the bone pain that started Day 6 and continues this morning. And while tracking it is deeply satisfying, we also know it won't necessarily help us with the next cycle. The effects of the chemo seem to change each time. We can't predict how it will feel, what will happen. Something new will probably come along to scare the crap out of us. This reminds me of so many other experiences, like being the parent of a new baby. Just when you think that you have it wired, that you *know* when the creature will sleep so you can wash your hair, the whole shebang changes up on you, and you get to start over from scratch.

That's where the courage comes in. Sure, we have woe a-plenty, but lots more courage, thank goodness, since courage is all that is required no matter what we face. Courage, it seems to me more and more these days, is the expression of a ferocious and abiding love. And that, my friends, we've got.

little serpent-love: Mary Oliver, I bow down at your feet

I took my second class last night from Stefanie Renard at Yogaworks in Larkspur, and for the second time she blew my mind not only with the quality of her instruction (and the sheer ass-kickery of the practice) but also with the words she shared during savasana. This Mary Oliver poem, from a book called "Owls and Other Fantasies" (the title of which, alone, confirms my deep reverence for this poet and her way of regarding the world), swept over me, took me to tears and back again.

Long Afternoon at the
Edge of Little Sister Pond

As for life,
I'm humbled,
I'm without words
sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,

and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched

though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen -
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort -
along with human love,

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?

~ Mary Oliver ~