Choosing my Self in difficult times

I'm journaling this because it helps me find clarity. Gives me perspective. Lets my friends know what is going on in my life... and might be helpful to others who are experiencing similar difficulties.

The topic is catastrophic illness. That, and how the temperment of the one who is ill affects both the outcome for themselves and those who love them. And I'm trying to figure out what I can do differently.

We are born. We live. We lose loved ones. And then we die. And I'm cool with that. Really.

I've had two sisters and a step-sister struggle with catastrophic illness. One died, one made a miraculous recovery after being on hospice, and the other... is... complicated.


With the sister who died, she was very headstrong and high-strung. She didn't want to make the changes necessary to recover from her illness. She lacked the patience and the self-control, frankly, and so she died, though a year later than I estimated, mainly because as her condition deteriorated she'd get scared, comply for a few weeks or a couple of months with medical care, and then she'd pull the plug, literally, and go back to a lifestyle that was physically depleting. She would get angry, and cry, and ask why this was happening to her, and I'd get her to a place where she'd acknowledge that she had been neglecting her health and that she was willfully non-compliant with regards to medical care and she'd agree to do what needed doing. And then she'd get to feeling better and revert to her prior way of being. And then she'd get to feeling worse, and she'd cry and beg for help, and get angry and irrational and verbally abusive when she didn't get what she wanted.  She pushed people away with one hand and pulled with the other. It was a vicious cycle that last two excruciating years. My only consolation, my only rationalization, is that she loved what she did, and she died doing what she loved.


Sister number Two was put on hospice when she came out of remission and her cancer was found to have metastasized to several places. She was in discomfort, and my step-sister's twin, who is a pharmacist, and my step-mother, who was a home health care nurse, did everything they could to "make her comfortable." They'd lost their grandfather a few years previously after a terribly painful and drawn-out experience, and they didn't want her to suffer. This sister knew how to ask for help, and how to accept it. She was angry, feeling like her life was being stolen from her, etc, but she invited people in. Her church congregation stepped up, brought food and comfort and companionship. Her friends visited. And I visited. And I spoke my truths to her, too. I told her to get up out of bed. Told her that when people are asked what they would do if they were told they have weeks to live they don't say "I'd lay in a hospital bed drugged out of my mind." I told her her life wasn't over, that she had as much time as I had -- today. Get up. Get up. Live. And yeah, maybe saying those things was a bit harsh, and maybe I could have found better ways to say them. But she got up out of that bed, and she lived her life, and she did her chemo again, and she is here now, two years later.


Sister number Three is like sister number One. Headstrong and high-strung. She's never been very good at asking for help and she's very reluctant to accept help. She's also extremely contrarian, and bi-polar or similarly biochemically imbalanced. I wouldn't go so far as to call her mentally ill, though she does have her moments -- she did try to kill herself two years ago last month, and she battles both depression and "fits" of some sort in which she says and does things that are completely unacceptable and often doesn't remember what she said or did during her outbursts. She's lovable, but makes loving her very difficult. It's a push-pull thing, a cycle of trial-by-fire testing followed by love and affection. Enter another cancer diagnosis. We thought she'd dodged the bullet in Feb 2008 but it turns out the tumor the doc found and removed was not the original one.

So in October 2009 the original site was located, typed, and radical treatment was recommended. And she didn't tell anyone. She decided to delay. Couldn't make up her mind what to do. And her behavior, her normally high-strung, difficult behavior, became that of someone who was nearly unhinged. I thought it was a bad case of her usual Seasonal Affective Disorder. I asked her to talk to me. And she would, sometimes. But mostly she'd call and babble and cry and when I'd repeat what she'd said to me back to her to ask for clarity she'd get verbally abusive, yelling and asking me why I was saying things like that or putting words in her mouth. She was that... disconnected from what she was saying and doing that she could not remember it 2 minutes afterwards. She got fired from her job and lost her medical plan and her ability to take the medical leave of absence that she should have taken in order to treat her illness and have financial security.

Finally, in February, she started treatment. Not the full treatment the doc wanted, which involved radical surgery and radiation and chemo. But she did start the chemo. For a few weeks. And then quit in March after a few treatments because they made her so sick and was putting her at risk for cardiac arrest. And then she called and told me and our step-sisters that she had a very aggressive form of cancer, and that she wasn't going to do the chemo or surgery or any of the radical/aggressive treatments suggested by her oncologist, and would I please take her daughter when she died.

Of course I said yes, and of course I drove the few hours to see her, and to spend a few days with her. And though some of the time with her was good, some of it was unpleasant. Her outbursts, her way of communicating when frustrated or upset (which was often) felt like verbal assaults. I'd watch her daughter jump and freeze and then run off to do whatever her mother said. Anything to stop the yelling. We talked, and she told me she didn't want me to change my life right now, not yet, that she was doing ok, for now. After a few days I returned home, and I had a guest arrive from out of town, and she tried mending fences with our father, with whom she'd been at odds since her car accident Christmas Day. I researched her cancer, sent her information on recommended treatments that didn't involve surgery or systemic chemotherapy.

And I heard back from a friend about my inquiry about taking custody of my niece. This friend told me that when my sister dies, my niece's father becomes her legal guardian, that he is, in fact still her legal guardian. My sister is legally separated from her husband but there has not been a formal custody agreement, and regardless of whether or not there was one, when she dies, legal custody automatically reverts to him as her natural father. That the only way I'd be able to keep my niece would be if my sister's husband signed her over to me. And she didn't want to hear it.

There are a lot of things she didn't want to hear, didn't want to talk about, but they are things that needed to be said, needed to be addressed. She could pretend that things were going to go the way she wanted, she could pretend that she could keep her daughter from her husband so he wouldn't win the epic war that had been their relationship of a dozen years... but ultimately, I felt it would be damaging to her daughter to tell her that she was going to stay in CA and live with me, only to be taken back East to live with her father, who loves her very much and only recently agreed to let his daughter stay with her mother indefinitely.

So I put it in a letter, and mailed it off -- this reality-check, and it was not well-received. Shortly thereafter, Sister #2 used a photo I took of Sister #1 all bald and curled up in her bed as a poster-child of sort for Relay for Life fundraising. Without asking either of us, and seeing as I'd made the photo available to Sister #2 and a few others without her permission, I accepted what followed as my responsibility. It was a firestorm.

It took me a couple of days to figure out what happened. The different stories I got from my nephew, my father, and my sister made no sense, and in many cases, were technically impossible. But I figured it out, and once I did, I accepted it. All of it. Still am, even as my partner asks me why I take it, why I take the 3am phone calls, why I listen to the yelling and abuse that doesn't give me room to say anything before the call is ended by Sister #3. Only for the phone to ring again, 3 or 30 minutes later,  for a new line of invective. She said she never wanted to talk to me again but she keeps calling. Her most recent call was to tell me that our step-mother told my niece that she needed to diet, as she's put on a fair amount of weight the past few months (not surprising given the stressful conditions she's living under) and that it was my fault. I'm not quite sure how that logic works, but somehow it makes sense to her.

My partner says that I am the most loving person he knows and that I do not deserve the abuse being heaped on me.  He wants me to disengage further, to remove myself from a situation that makes me so sad, that dims my inner light. He says he's looking forward to answering her next phone call, since she keeps calling the line in is bedroom even though I asked her not to. A deliberate bit of inconsideration on her part, I know.

I do not know what to do. I know that I want to be with my sister. But I know that the price for that privilege is admission to a roller-coaster ride of emotional ups and downs, verbal abuse, irrational behavior. And keeping my mouth shut.

The latter I can probably do. If she can't handle the truth, she can't handle it. But its the roller-coaster ride I can't handle. She thinks we can't handle her being ill. She says that is why she took so long to tell the family, because she didn't think we could handle it. But that is self-deception. We've handled so much -- what's another bout of cancer? Another death? No, she's the one who cannot handle it, and what is more, her inability to handle it makes life unpleasant for everyone around her.

I can handle her having cancer. I can handle knowing that she's a good 3 years into an aggressive form of cancer that has probably spread to her liver and kidneys and bones. I can handle the care-giving. I've done it many times before.  I can handle the normal emotional ups and downs of cancer patients, the anger and the sadness and the tears. I know how to be with, really be with others. And I'm not afraid of death and dying.

But what I can't handle -- is the frenetic, boiling, ever-changing emotional states. It's like being pounded by waves while caught in a rip-tide. I feel overwhelmed and afraid of capsizing. I feel like I'm suffocating on her emotion, like I'm choking on it as it fills the room, as she vibrates with it, blares it, assaults everyone around her with it. And whether she lives 3 months, or 6 months, or a year -- I'm not sure I can make the trade-off, pay the blood-price. I can't take abuse. Its like cancer -- insidious, invasive, deadening. I had enough to last me a lifetime already and I just don't want to see if I'm up to enduring the unendurable one more time.

Will I regret not finding a way to placate her and work things out whatever it takes? Possibly. But in the long run, I'll have saved myself the inevitable experience of her instability, rages, and abuses. In the end, I'm the one who is going to survive her, and I'd rather be mentally and emotionally capable of handling the mess she'll leave behind when she dies. I hoped that some how, some way, I could show her that path I've found and walked these past years, the path of inner peace and love and joy.  But I can't choose those things and offer myself up denigration and abuse at the same time. So, I guess the place I've arrived at as I've written this down is... I choose me. My mental health. My vitality. And if she wants me to be a part of her life, whatever is left of it, she's going to have to accept that I'm not going to be her whipping boy just because she feels the need to vent her rage at the world at someone. I'm not a masochist, Sister. Find another puppy to kick. This one is staying out of harm's way.

Love in the Old, Love in the New

And so ends a year that was both the worst and the best in my life so far.

Three cancer diagnoses, two deaths, surgeries, illnesses, and a near-death experience for me -- in ways it felt as though we were the Children of Job, a family cursed. For the most part, we chose not to make it mean that. Life Happens, I reminded everyone, And while we often don't get to choose what happens, we always get to choose what we make it mean.

I miss my sister, but at least I am missing only one, and not three out of the four. The long nights sitting at Caro's bedside whispering to her to get up, to get out of bed, to live the rest of her life, how ever long that was -- those nights paid off. She got out of bed, she did her chemo, and she is living her life. The hours and hours with Tess on the phone, urging her to choose life, to choose mental and physical well-being, to choose herself and get out of an abusive marriage -- those hours paid off. She will be flying home to California on January 1. And the hours spent with Granddad, loving him, caring for him, telling him it is ok to go home -- those hours, too, paid off. He died peacefully, before the pain from the cancer grew too great.

And through all this, I discovered that I was not alone. I was not alone in my loss, my pain, or my suffering. The world is full of it. Nor was I alone in getting through this year. I've been truly blessed with friends who are compassionate and loving. I learned a lot from them and through them this year. A breakdown in my health brought a breakthrough in Living. I learned that my own vulnerability brought out the best in people. I learned that people are inherently good. That people want to help, to give back, to contribute. I learned about the intimacy of suffering *with* others rather than suffering alone. And I learned that I am enough. That I am enough for myself, and my family, and my friends, and where I grow thin or tired or worn, someone will provide the energy I need to continue.

I have friends who held me the night my sister died. They offered no comforting platitudes, only the comfort of their bodies, warm and loving, pressed against mine. The antidote to grief is love, and they were fountains of it.

I have a friend who took care of me when I was sick, 500 miles from home. So sick I didn't recognize the seriousness of my illness, so sick that I spent three weeks on home health care after two weeks in the hospital. He was there for me in a way that I never thought anyone would be, in a way I've always tried to be there for others, and his willingness to do whatever it took to see me healthy again was a lesson in the power of my own vulnerability to move others to be better people.

I have friends who gave of themselves and enriched my life and I am grateful, so grateful, for the joy and laughter and the openness and the tears. They made this year a great year for me, one I will never forget.

Soon this year ends. Soon I go to the airport to retrieve the man I love, and spend the remaining hours of this year doing those things and feeling those things which I intend to carry forward into the New Year. And foremost of it all, is Love.

To Sir, With Love

Within an hour of his death, my cousin and I poured some whiskey and drank a toast to Granddad, a toast taken from the title of the book I'd been reading to him the past two days. To Sir, with love. May he rest in peace.


He was waiting for me to come to him, and his decline once I arrived was stunning in its swiftness. He kept his faculties the entire time, and he died peacefully at home, with loved ones at his side. It has been my role in this family to help ease passings, and perhaps because I have finally fully embraced that role, this passing was the most peaceful yet. I was in a place of love and acceptance, and every thought, every word, every touch was loving and grateful. Thank you for letting me take care of you, it is a priviledge, I told him, after he apologized for his incontinence and need to be cleaned up. Its ok, you can let go now, I projected my thoughts at him. I'll be here to care for the living.


My aunt home from work, I made sure he was comfortable, and then I lay down for a nap, my first bit of sleep in 36 hours. I was unsurprised when my aunt awakened me 90 minutes later to say he was gone. I rose and held his hand and watched the last of his breath leave his lungs and I felt so radiant inside. I could not help but smile through my tears, fully at peace, both with his death, and that of my sister.


The year began with a death and now it ends with one. Another few days and it will be Solstice, when the dying of the light is transformed into renewal. A new year, with new beginnings, and new endings. I can live with that knowledge, just as I can live with the uncertainty of details. Life is a brush that paints in broad, sweeping strokes. When I look ahead, I can see the outline, the dips and curves. But the details, ah, those are completed in the fullness of each moment -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Surprise! Its December.

(Tammy and her niece, Nov 2003)

December has come, to my surprise. It has crept up on me. For the past 10 years December has always been a hectic month, a headlong dash into what we in the fiscal/accounting field simply call "Year End". But not this one. Last month I quit my job and my life to move nearer to family and love. I am no longer tied to the grueling schedule, but neither am I tied to the certainty of a salary. It is an interesting adjustment to make.

The past couple of weeks have been a pleasant interlude, and opportunity to rest after the hectic pace of November. I've been waking up when I want to, which is usually between 8 and 9 am. I see my housemate off for work between 10 and 11. I go work out. I come back and work on my writing and recording and websites. For the first time since Tammy's illness became life-threatening, I've had both the time and the creative energy to think about how to put my work out there to touch more lives and perhaps earn a bit from it. I unpack a bit. I read some. I ride my sybian and leave naughty voicemail messages. And when my lover is free, I ride him. It is lovely, having sex almost daily. And it is interesting how our relationship has changed.

Next week I will be at my Grandfather's. It gives everyone in Tulsa a bit of a break, and my grandfather is asking to see me. Then the following two weeks I'll be with family back in California. It will be the first time I've spent Christmas with my family in over 10 years. And it will be the first Christmas without Tammy. I'm grateful that my other two sisters who had grim cancer diagnoses are still with us, and grateful, too, that Grandfather will live to see the New Year. But I am sad, nonetheless. Tammy loved Christmas.

Sadness by email

My father emailed me. I always tighten up a bit when I see his name in my mailbox. He usually writes when he has something important to tell me and doesn't want to do it by phone because we'll both end up in tears. Even so, I tried to think positively, but the first line was a punch in the gut. My father's father is dying. Three months at most, they say. They found a mass in his lung and he doesn't want to fight it, not at his age. So my father emailed me that he is preparing to go stay with his father, and get him on hospice and care for him until his time comes. He said he's feeling very sad and low on energy--its been a tough year--and begged me to take care, because I'm one of the few people he has to draw on at this time.

How do you respond to that kind of news? What do you tell a man who has dealt with death and dying and illness in his children and siblings now facing the death of his father? I wasn't quite sure how to respond, so I just started writing.

It is ok to be depressed over Granddad. Its been a tough year. Sometimes I feel like shaking my fist at Heaven and saying "Enough is enough!" And other times, I feel like asking "Doesn't Heaven have enough angels yet?" But mostly, I recognize that in life there is only one certainty, and that is death. And while I am not ready to embrace that certainty for myself, Granddad is. And I respect that. And am willing to let him go. I remember how hard it was for Granny and Tammy to go. They wanted to, both of them, they were so tired, but we wanted them to stay. And in that spiritual tug-of-war there is no difference between winning and losing--there is just struggle and resistance. Truth be told I've not got much resistance left. I have learned Acceptance with a capital 'A'. Not acceptance as in resignation, but acceptance as in, this is how Life is, this is my reality, and I can waste my energy fighting Life, or I can accept what it throws at me and fight for what I can change, and for the differences I can make in the world.

I am glad that you can go be with him. Please do. I am sure he wants you there, but most importantly, it is where you want to be. Just know that you don't have to suck it up. Its ok to be sad, its ok to cry. Granddad understands tears now. He's developed an intimacy with them since his stroke, and in some ways tears are sacred and they've anointed him again and again over the years. Love will out, one way or another, and so will joy and sorrow. I love you.

Keep taking good care of yourself. Let me know what I can do for you both. I'll be here.

Even if I said the wrong things, I hope he knows I mean them in the best way. The sad thing is that today is his mother's birthday. Sad news to dispense on a day we remember her by, my tiny grandmother with her fuschia lipstick and silvery crew-cut hair. Miss you, Granny.

California Dreamin'

In Romeo & Juliet, Mercutio said something like: "A plague upon your house. Upon both your houses!"

There are days when I feel like my house is under a plague.

I have three sisters left. Two are ill, one terminally so. The third is the twin of the one who is terminal. She is exhausted from months of care-giving and is wondering how she is going to live life without her twin. My step-mother cries a lot, and prays. My father is stressed, tired, infinitely sad. My father's sister just had surgery. My father's brother is in the hospital. My mother's brother is disabled and unwell.

Its crazy.

Meanwhile, my life is assuming a new rhythm. My step-mother is happy I'm here. I am a breath of fresh air, she says, a big-energy person who fills a room, and ever the astonishing child. I try to be upbeat and positive, to radiate compassion, to hold her when she cries over her daughter's suffering. I show everyone photos of Tammy, of Oregon, of my travels, and entice them to eat things they've never had before: mini-wedges of mango and ginger stilton, slices of warm artisan bread with chevre, balls of gorgonzola rolled in chopped nuts and baked. Slices of english cucumber with mascarpone and bits of cured meat, fruit, or nuts on top.

Some nights I take my turn checking on Caro every two hours, making sure she is comfortable, applying topical medications, adjusting the blankets. Pain has creased her forehead prematurely. Her eyes are tired. She sleeps a lot, and when she speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper. Soon, we hope. Soon her suffering will end, please, oh merciful God we pray, amen.

Sometimes at night my body curls around the grief in my middle, and I cry. Sometimes, sleepless, I open my laptop and write.

And sometimes I listen to my self-hypnosis scripts. Relax, my own voice tells me. Bathe in the healing white light of my consciousness. Know myself as the possibility of freedom, of joy, and powerful peace. Listen to the sea birds, imagine myself swimming the ocean, rocking in it, comforted by it, my own tears of sadness blending with it. Awaken rested, refreshed, at peace, my own voice whispers into my ears just before I end the trance and send myself to sleep.

And in the morning I am strong again, a mountain of light with just a few spots of erosion showing. No landslides yet. (A twinge. Tammy's favorite song: Landslide.)

Some days I spend at a friend's house, taking a time-out. We watch movies and play games, taking breaks to go for sushi and dim sum. He does his best to make me smile, and lets me snuggle up to him, and just be. And best of all, at his place I can sleep. Sometimes I stretch out on his bed and nap with his cat in the sunlight, letting the ocean breeze tickle my skin.

Life is what it is. The plague will pass. Meanwhile, I'm doing my best to live each day fully, even in extraordinary circumstances like these.

weariness

There are many kinds of weariness.
There is physical weariness, which is remedied by rest.
There is mental weariness, which is remedied by sleep.
There is emotional weariness, which is remedied by love.
And there is weariness of the spirit, which is assuaged by time.

I am bone-deep weary on all fronts. Had I the energy, I might even be in despair, but alas I'm too weary even for that.

A dear one opened his home to me and I slept 14 hours--unheard of for me, the woman who never sleeps more than six hours. I slept, making up for the long nights of giving meds every hour to the sister who is still living but jealous of the one who died. I am so sad that every ounce of water in me feels like a pound of tears.

I am home now, and in a short while I will be going back to work, back to the world of taxes and financial services. A world of precision. A world whose parameters I know well and know how to control. A world in which the solution is always 'zero', regardless of the problem. At work, when my colleagues get caught up in the drama of an error, I remind them that they are focusing on the problem, instead of the solution.

What is my solution to loss and death and weariness? WORK.

Leaving Massachusetts

The sun shone. The rain came, a torrential downpour complete with thunder and lightning. And then it snowed. And rained some more. All in 10 days. I'd forgotten how bizarre the weather could be in New England.

She was brain dead but we kept her on life support long enough for them to find donors for her organs. Four people were given a second chance at life. This is a comfort to me somehow, knowing that some part of her lives on in others. Like me, she had no children.

She was cremated. Her urn is actually a beautiful wooden box, which we will take to Hawaii. We will disburse her ashes in the same place we did our mother's ashes 6 years ago.

I went to her boyfriend's house to get her things. I had this odd moment, this memory-echo, when I went to get into the rental car stuffed full of clothing and paperwork and medical supplies. I remembered Tammy and me in Hilo, standing next to my mother's car, which contained all of her belongings. It seemed so sad that her life fit into a car, and my sister Tammy sobbed then, horrible wracking sobs that echoed in the jungle with the same mournful quality as wolves howling. My other sister unpacked the rental car when I got to her place. I couldn't seem to do it. I was so blocked on it, for some reason. But she understood and did it for me.


We had a quiet ceremony at the funeral home. Just family and a few close friends. Friends of hers opened their restaurant early and served us lunch. I had homemade tortellini soup and a portobello mushroom salad. It was all quite tasty. It was the first thing I remember tasting in a week, actually.

Friday we opened her bar for a goodbye party. Last call for alcohol. It was just for 4 hours, but there must have been 250 people who showed up to pay their respects and send her off. I think she would have liked it. She always threw a good party.

I'm in Portland now, with an 18 hour turn-around and then to California to see my sister Caro before she dies. She said come now, she is tired. The tumor on her aorta makes every beat of her heart painful, and she is ready to go. And so I am coming.

Such a painful way to start a new year, with so much loss and suffering. I could make it mean a lot of different things about the world, about life... I could chose to make it mean that life is unfair, that it sucks--all sorts of things. I choose instead to make it mean that Tammy is free of suffering and Caro soon will be, and that life is what it is and every day we have is the most important day of our lives.

Life, Death, and the Amaryllis

I am the dance of snowflakes as they tumble down a chasm. My nature cannot overcome the howling wind nor the inevitability of gravity, but I dance anyway. Is it the dance of life, or is it the dance of death? I do not know. I know only that I dance.

I packed two suitcases last night, one for the East Coast, one for the West Coast. I awakened from a bad dream at 2am. So much on my mind, so many trips ahead. California to see one sister who is dying, Massachusetts to be with another for surgery to remove cancer, and lo, phone calls at 4am, a third sister in a coma. The brain aneurism fairy visited her in the middle of the night. Frantic father, torn between two coasts -- the deathbed of one daughter, and now another. How sad, to have three daughters in their thirties sick or dying. He must feel like the biblical Job.


"How are you holding up?" a friend asked.
I answered, "The amaryllis on my windowsill is blooming."
A moment later I thought, How Zen.

Returned from California

My visit to California was extraordinary. I got to see two different sets of friends, my sister and her family, and my father. I watched my nephew in a play, bounced my niece on my knees, enjoyed the 50F Bay Area weather and the 90F Valley weather, and smiled a lot.

Last Friday I pulled up to my sister's house around 11pm. She stumbled out of bed to greet me and gave me a big hug.
She said "Wow, you feel good."
I said "Thank you."
She said, "No, I mean you feel GOOD. Have you fallen in love or lost weight or something?"
I said, "I've fallen in love with Life and I've lost the past."

Landmark Education is paying off. Best investment I've made in myself. Better than the two years of therapy I went through. Wheee. Finally, I have access to tools that make it possible for me to live an even more vibrant, extraordinary life!

The delight of surprise memories

Life is full: rich and colourful, dark and painful, replete with abundance, plagued with scarcity. For all these reasons, I've not posted to my blog in too long. I have several thoughts started, but a scarcity of time has prevented me from completing them. I will, though.

For now, though, I feel an urge to post this: Earlier this week, two memories surfaced for me. They were good memories. Memories of my mother, and my maternal grandfather. I was talking to 'Doc' (Bob) at HypnoFantasy about the possibility of doing hypnotic scripts. I told him I did not know much about hypnosis and wanted to understand it better before I attempted to hypnotize anyone else.

At some point in the conversation, I felt some internal pressure, some resistance to the idea of hypnosis for some reason, and I took a moment to examine it. And when I did, I suddenly remembered why I've always found it so easy to meditate, to fall into trance--I remembered that my mother used to hypnotize me and my sisters. WHAT?! I felt this little jab of panic as my old distrust of her surfaced. What did she say to me, when I was in trance, what suggestions did she make? I've no idea. I'll never know, because she is dead. I have decided to trust that the suggestions she made to me were intended to be beneficial. It is difficult for me, this trust, because she demonstrated so little in the way of maternal feeling, and I have so little childhood knowledge or memory of her.

But I found it inside me to trust that when he hypnotized me, she meant well, because I carry that memory of her brushing my hair when I was a child. I remembered the pleasure of the brush scraping lightly against my scalp and pulling gently at the roots of my hair, running down my back, and the waves of gooseflesh that ebbed and flowed with the rhythm of the brush... I remembered the sun on my face and on my skin, warming me as I sat naked before her, my knees pulled up under my chin. And I remembered her voice, her beautiful, mellifluous, soothing voice, saying my name. And I was grateful for that one memory, and I held it until it glowed, and I basked the light of my mother's love once again--and the pressure, the resistance to the idea of hypnosis, faded. My unconventional, counter-culture mother helped make me the woman I am today. And I like who I am :)

The other memory was of her father. He died the same year she took off and I have very few memories of him. But I was talking to someone about voice-over recording, and microphones, and I suddenly remembered Grandfather. He had a radio show! I could feel laughter burbling up inside me as I remembered. He, too, had a wonderful voice, which he learned put to good use as a missionary evangelist. He was one of Aimee Semple McPherson's students, having graduated from Life Bible College at Angelus Temple in the late 1920's, and she had a radio show. So did he. Even during the years he battled cancer, after he retired from the pulpit, he was on the air. I remember that he had taken over one of the closets in the guest room, the one that had the pull-down door to the attic. I remember him sitting in that little room stacked with books and papers, with the big microphone in front of him and the reel-to-reel tape machine running as he sermonized, his voice resonant and his blue eyes blazing. He put the 'charismatic' in 'Christian', Grandfather did.

So here I am, by some cosmic convolution, sitting at a desk, surrounded by books and papers, with a big microphone hanging in front of me, spinning tales on sexuality in my mother's voice for an audience that likes to be hypnotized. It makes me smile. There is something fitting in that.

Home from Thanksgiving Vacation

Home.

I am sitting at the dining table sipping jasmine tea and nibbling on dark chocolate with bits of crystalized ginger in it, watching the black bamboo and the sweet orange osmanthus sway in the breeze. It is silent except for the deep thrum of the windchimes and the tap of my fingertips on the keyboard. I forgot how much I relish silence.

Ten days of travel. The joys of seeing family and friends and children. Road noise, airport announcements, beeps and flashes, the annoying endless loop of television programming.

And now, home. Silence. People say silence is golden but I think few really understand what that really means. It seems to me like so many people fear being alone with their thoughts, fear the silencing of the external noise that drowns out their internal dialogue.

And now that I am alone, I'll let my thoughts flow, unedited, from my fingertips...


The photo above is of my niece gathering up the golden leaves of the ginkgo tree. I braided some of her hair and put ginkgo leaves in it to form a crown. She looked like a princess with golden butterflies in her hair. A lovely child of four, with mossy green-brown eyes, so solemn and wide, and hair the colour of tobacco, brown and gold, with the same curls as mine. She resembles my mother in ways, particularly her mouth and chin, and she has the permanent sun-kissed tan that mom always had and which my sister's and I did not get. Lucky girl. I brought her Dr Seuss books and read to her, and she read the stories back to me, even mimicking the accents. She is so articulate, so expressive, so impossibly bright. I taught her fencing poses and lunges one day last May and she still remembered them. When she wrapped her arms around me and told me she loved me and missed me I fell in love with her all over again. My sister and her husband have done a fine job of raising her.

My nephew is a source of wonder to me. In January he will be 14. He is 5'9" already, and wearing a size 13 shoe. His hands are larger than mine, and mine are large for a woman. He is big and fleshy, poised for another spurt of growth. His nature is similar to what mine was at his age... he is very empathetic and kind, good-natured and friendly. He is popular with his peers but does not seek it. He does phenomenally in school--my sister was concerned that he was not bringing home any school work and met with his teachers, but the truth is that even with the GATE program he is hardly challenged at all. He finishes most of his homework before he leaves school for the day. I was prepared to find him at that age where teenaged boys don't want anything to do with their family--that age when they are exerting their independance and withdrawing from their family in favor of their friends. But he's not there yet, and perhaps never will become that self-isolating. For now he is thoughtful, affectionate and snuggly. I loved snuggling up to him and listening to him breathe, listening to him talk about the things that are important to him. Manga. PS2. Yugi-oh. Movies. Swimming. School.

We talked about girls. He said there are girls at school who say they are in love with him and I could tell that it confused him. "I'm too young for a relationship," he said to me with such seriousness. I always have condoms with me and I offered to leave him some but he blushed said he was fine--my sister has made some available to him but he doesn't plan to use them any time soon. I like him. Smart, articulate, brave, sure of himself in ways few teens are. He knows he is loved. My sister marinates him in it. I have faith that he will survive adolescence with his 'self' more or less intact.

As for my sisters, both are well. The one who was ill, well, she's getting better physically, but she drifts around a lot, somewhat out of sync with reality in ways that are hard to pinpoint. Some of that is being on morphine for pain, I know, but some of it is residual psychosis from advanced Beri-beri. She is existing right now... exisiting, and not in a place to care much for herself or others... she keeps falling asleep with lighted cigarettes in her hands, leaving burn-holes in carpets, blankets and clothes, freaking my other sister out. They fight over the smoking... my youngest sister fears that she is going to wake up to her house burning down. And so it goes.

Wednesday night I made yellow curry with vegetables and chicken for everyone. I decided it would be a good idea to have something completely different from what we'd be eating on Thanksgiving. Its a speciality of mine and my brother-in-law and my nephew were dubious, but find themselves enjoying it rather a lot.

Thursday's Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. My sister cooked the turkey in cheesecloth, which kept it very moist. There was cornbread stuffing cooked in a muffin pan, acorn squash, green beans with bacon, mashed potatoes, yams, and cranberry sauce. Dessert (much later) was pecan pie or chocolate cream pie. I had the pecan pie, of course. The best part was snuggling up with my nephew for a nap.

Friday the six of us drove up into the Sierras to Shaver Lake, which is located about half-way between Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon. We had some of the best pizza I've ever eaten and strolled around the town a bit. The kids got their photos taken with Santa and my brother-in-law snapped a photo of my sister and I clowning around at the base of the town's Christmas Tree. It is a good photo. I think I'll have it printed and send it to my sister.

During the course of writing this I've gotten several phone calls and IMs. It is good to be home and good to know I was missed. I'm ready to resume my life here in Portland, even with the spectre of 8 weeks of 10 - 12 hours days at work on the horizon. Ah well, the joys of being in the accounting field.