Nothing > Love

This morning I learned that one of my favorite writers, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, is dying – before long – of ovarian cancer.  I had known that she was sick for about the past month, but I didn’t realize that her situation was so grim.  Gratefully, in this day and age, a cancer diagnosis isn’t a certain death, but unfortunately there are still many types of cancer that are not as treatable as others.  By now, you've probably heard about her from the article in the New York Times, where she essentially writes a dating ad for her soon-to-be-widowed husband.  It is one of the loveliest love letters I've ever read.

AKR, as I think of this writer, has written both children’s books and several memoirs and books for adults.  Her children’s books are sweet, often with a theme of inclusion or permission to be your true self.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed her memoirs.  The first one I came across was An Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life.  In this book, she chronicles her life, encyclopedia-style.  AKR is a few years younger than me, so she grew up in the age of encyclopedias.  This book contains short smatterings of her thoughts on various topics, alphabetized and cross-referenced.  There was a set of Collier’s Encyclopedias in my house that my parents probably spent far too much on and which I loved.  They contained the entirety of the known universe.  Anything I wanted to know more about lurked within those heavy tomes.  I can still recall the weight of the volume on my cross-legged lap, the cracking sound of the spines as they were opened, revealing glossy pages and sometimes mystifying black and white photos.  AKR’s uncanny ability to connect interesting commonalities of words or ideas is equal parts amusing, poignant, and oh, so true.  I identified with her ideas and experiences on such a deep level that I often found myself nodding my head in agreement, wondering how she knew me so well.

Through her works, I connected to a couple of friends.  One of those was a college friend, Tara, who was lucky enough to host AKR at her school in Thailand where she was working as a librarian a few years ago.  We both loved AKR’s writing and Tara was sweet enough to send me temporary tattoos from the swag AKR brought to her school.  Given AKR’s latest article, the message is especially pointed.

This fall, I read her latest memoir, Textbook Amy KR.  It’s an easy read with lots of negative space.  For example, here's a page  that struck such a chord I took a photo of it and posted it on my Instagram:

The book also provides many opportunities for readers to interact with one another and AKR.  Readers could share images of rainbows, or enter a contest for AKR to send one lucky participant a pecan pie. 

AKR sees the world through a charmed lens, and it is heartbreaking to me to learn that her diagnosis is so grim.  Her symbol is a yellow umbrella – something bright and sunny on a grey day.  I’ll sport one of her temporary tattoos this weekend to remind me to rise above that which is petty and draining, and to hug and smile and live a little more deliberately.  And to remember always one of her best observations:  Nothing > Love.

The Spaces in Between

I’m sitting on the beach watching the tide lap in and the sun is slowly sinking beyond the horizon.  A few puffs of cloud strategically frame the setting sun.  My family is playing Frisbee in the sand behind me and I’m thinking of the family of a college friend I’d fallen out of touch with who passed away this morning after a long and difficult struggle.  He spent nine long months hovering in that in-between space that bridges death and life, moving from ICU to less acute care and back again and again.  He was younger than me.

These in-between spaces are where struggle often seems to reside.  I think of this as I watch the waves lay claim to the land and the land wears itself to smaller and smaller particles.  Here, on the edge of the continent and the edge of the sea, I sit on a narrow sliver of land called the Strandway.  I wonder what it might resemble in another generation’s time, how climate change might affect this densely populated and low-lying strip between sea and bay.

Forty or so minutes south, lies Mexico, whose culture and language enriched my childhood and early career teaching English as a Second Language.  That in-between space of borderlands from here and stretching east through Texas, too, has been a place of struggle.  As I learn the stories of refugees fleeing Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan today, hoping to arrive in Europe or North America, I think of this border here, too.  I think of how the struggle of the refugee is one of bleak hope and abject desperation, the likes of which is even more foreign to me than life underwater or in outer space.  The in-between space occupied by refugees and immigrants, even into the subsequent generation, is one that few of us in America can fathom.  When we talk about immigration, it’s often framed in terms of cost, but how often do we think of what it costs a parent to take a child from the only place they’ve called home, at great peril to all, likely never to return?  And to have such faith in the investment of their own resources into their offspring’s future, even if death is a likely outcome?  I think of this massive flow of refugees from the Middle East and I have no answers and no solutions and I hate how helpless I feel.  At the same time I question how Europe will balance the unanticipated logistics of such a huge human migration. 

It’s hard not to feel a sense of guilt regarding my own good luck to have been born when and where I was.  I ponder these in-between spaces and the one I occupy while on vacation, sandwiched between one grading period and the next.  And yet, in spite of my own good fortune, it’s somehow still easy to get cranky about feeling slightly hungry while playing tourist, or about being less than enthusiastic at how the rest of the family’s interests are not always meshing with my own.  It’s easy, too, to feel annoyed that our little cottage here lies beneath the flight path of the San Diego Airport.  At regular intervals throughout the day and into the night, jets filled with humans whose needs (I remind myself) are just as valid as my own, roar overhead to various destinations.  But I’m trying hard to maintain perspective, which sometimes reaches us in the most mundane of ways.  When we first arrived here at this cottage, we briefly met a guest staying in another part of the building.  When I saw him later, I asked him how he was doing, and his response was, “Better than I deserve.”  And I thought what a fantastic sentiment.  Surely that’s an attitude that I can cultivate, living in this land of plenty with an abundance of good fortune.  Sometimes, though, it’s hard not to want more, to feel like we deserve more, even when we surely have more than we will ever need, even though I often remind myself that gratitude is the key to turning what we have into enough.

These in-between spaces, too, in spite of the struggles that exist in them, are also rich in diversity and life.  What exists in between is unique and often not found elsewhere, in terms of ecosystems like tide pools and also more esoteric thoughts, too.  The clarity that finds us here, gazing out at the ocean, also rarely exists elsewhere.  Once I’ve ventured inland, back beyond the scent of the ocean breeze, where the shushing of the waves no longer calms my noisy thoughts, I return to that chattering state of mind which crowds out any quieting effect the ocean might have had.  The peaceful thoughts fall like the proverbial sand through my fingers.  But the memories remain.  We can reflect on the beauty of the sunset, or good times with old friends, and our gratitude that these things did, in fact, exist.  And perhaps at times those memories, the mind revisiting those in-between spaces, are enough.

Here at the coast, my gaze is drawn out, toward the wide horizon, into that space between here and there.  And after an interval, my eyes still on the horizon, I shift the gaze inward.  There’s a mental inventory of sorts that I calculate every time I take in a vast landscape like the ocean.  The waves rise and fall, advance and retreat, their constancy soothing and calming on a fair day such as this.  And, as if in time to their rhythm, a litany of gratitude answers their cadence:  family, friends, health, freedom, and so much more, and the waves echo the thanks in my thoughts:  this is enough, this is more than enough, more than enough.

Light and Darkness on the Solstice

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.  – John Lennon

The past couple weeks I’ve been receiving mail, not the electronic kind, which is great in its own way, but real mail.  There is something so lovely about finding an envelope in my mailbox, addressed by a familiar hand, and posted with an actual stamp.  I’ve been welcoming some of these each day lately, with stories and photographs of people I love tucked inside.  I treasure each and every one of them, but  I wanted to share a couple of them with you.

There’s one letter each year that Dan and I especially anticipate.  It’s written by a woman who was in the hydrology program with Dan at U of A.  She’s smart as a whip and definitely one of the funniest holiday letter authors in North America – quite possibly the world, as I assume that the holiday form letter is a distinctively American tradition.

In these letters, she relates the same family news and events as most of us are likely to share, but the way she approaches even the most mundane of life’s events (like potty training) and household disasters (flooded basement followed by ice storm) seem like sitcom fodder.  Really, really good sitcom fodder.  What a gift it is to receive letter laughter each year from across the country.  It always makes me reframe how I might view similar events in my life with a more humorous perspective.

This year we received one Christmas letter in particular that was so courageous in its honesty.  One of my dear relatives has vascular dementia, which has caused her to lose much memory and language.  I haven’t seen her in several years, but I remember her as a vibrant, intelligent woman and a great storyteller with an infectious laugh.  Trained as a nurse, she worked for decades in orthopedic medicine. 

Like most holiday letters, this one from her spouse relayed the goings-on of the past twelve months and the accomplishments of their children and grandchildren.  It was also upfront about the challenges they now face on a daily basis.  But there wasn’t a shred of self-pity or woe.  The letter closed with beautiful words that brilliantly reflect the essence of my grandmother’s maxim:  bloom where you are planted.  In spite of unforeseen health issues (and honestly, how many health issues are foreseen?), they have changed their outlook to consider the realities of their lives, adjusting their expectations to mirror a much different retirement than originally anticipated.  

There are no guarantees in this life.  Each of our lives is marked by minor and major tragedies as unique, and yet as ordinary, as each of us.  We can choose to wallow in the injustice, and indeed, many do.  Or we can shine.  As MLK put it, “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”  It is up to each of us how we choose to react.  In fact, our reaction is perhaps the only thing we can truly control in this life.    May the coming year fill you with light and love and laughter, and a desire to savor each day’s abundance.  Carpe diem, just like the old poets said.

The Burden Lifted

Friday afternoon, I sat with my family in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. I was fidgety, nervous, and I thought of how a doctor’s office is probably one of the most anxious places on earth. We wait there for news that can be life-changing. It’s a wrenching place to sit, to wait, to play out the various worst-case and best-case scenarios, all while thinking about the future despite being trapped in the apprehensive present.

That day, though, we were all waiting for good news. Would Arden be released from the burden of wearing her eye patch? This patient girl, who now breezes through a couple of chapter books a week, who had begun wearing her patch when she could read and write only her own name. This girl, who had worn the patch for four years: fully half her life. This girl, who once had no vision at all in one eye, and who now has good enough vision to pass a driver’s license vision exam.

I thought of how either of my daughters would remind me if I seemed to have forgotten about the day’s patching by chanting: P-A-T-C-H, P-A-T-C-H! It always seemed like they spelled it as if it were an unspeakable word, not quite a curse word, but almost.

I thought of all the hours and hours Arden had endured, and how incredibly grateful and lucky she’s been that A) the patch was effective B) that more drastic options like surgery weren’t required and C) that she was responsible and compliant enough to wear it. As difficult as it was at times, it was the simplest and easiest of all the options out there.

Sometimes in the course of my day at work, I see kids who are confined to wheelchairs, who cannot feed themselves, who cannot communicate beyond their most basic of needs, if that. In my mind, I see these kids as my outlook barometer. They help me to reset my attitude. It’s not me in that wheelchair, so what do I really have to complain about today? It’s not my kid there, so what can I feel grateful for today?

I thought of those kids in the wheelchairs while I waited, reminding myself that even if Arden would have to continue with the eye patch, there was still so much to be grateful for. I thought of how the patch could sometimes flip her attitude from sunny to cloudy, of how she hated to wear it in public and often felt awkward at strangers’ prying questions. But I also thought of how she’s been planning a No More Patch Party to celebrate, including some cool cupcakes in the patch-wearing pirate cupcake liners we found several months ago.

Finally, we were called back to a room, the three of us squeezing into the small seating area while Arden sat, looking tiny, in the too-big examination chair. Her fantastic, encouraging doctor supported her throughout the eye exam, each of us in the family watching and listening anxiously as she read the letters on the screen, knowing she was mistaking some, and hoping that she was doing well enough.

And we waited. The doctor took notes, asked questions, entered information into her laptop, and then she turned to us: yes, she could stop wearing the patch!

In spite of the small caveat that she return in April to be certain she wasn’t backing off on her gains, we cheered quietly with high fives at her burden lifted – definitely more sweet than bitter, with Arden’s proud smile elevating my no-longer anxious heart.