Tree Magic

 While running through the old growth redwoods today, the older adult redwoods, the elders, the sages, sensei masters, maestros of the girth of a Mahler symphony, while running among them on the paved path inserted by people in order to allow us to see and be among the trees, I thought about community. I touched the bark and moss and burls as I loped past, in gratitude and like all of my species, in an attempt to take with me some of the mystery, the tree magic.

16 months ago, I was not sure I would ever run again. Myelopathy had me walking askew and unable to do the things that come easily enough to me, like playing piano or lifting a puzzle piece with my fingers. Turning pages of a book and walking in a straight line required a connection no longer being made. All my skepticism about modern medicine had to take a hike for the relinquishing of control to an anesthesiologist and neurosurgeon, all standing in a row with nurses when I entered the operating theater. 

Good fortune, skilled and attentive physicians and good old fashioned fear of what was happening to me spurred me to take the leap and have led me to be a good deal better than I was. Including, today, running the marathon again.

I heard someone around mile 18 say “did she just touch that tree?” But around mile 10 when I did a little leap up to tap Sir Redwood, someone else shouted “Yeah! Tree magic!” Either way I might be weird but besides the tree magic the people magic has me thinking that our world is on the okay side of disaster. While we are seemingly surrounded on all sides by rage, the hundreds out running today had smiles and good wishes. A 3 year old handed me a cup of water with bright eyes gazing upwards and a huge smile. James Washington and a multitude of volunteers fed, watered, herded and cheered on the racers. 

I reached out to some friends before the race to help me build a playlist. Earth, Wind & Fire made a couple of appearances. David Bowie, AC/DC, Jenny Scheinmann, John Coltrane, Jon Batiste, Beyoncé, and of the 3.5 hours of music, there was only one duplicate (Batiste-Freedom), and only one that I picked myself (Boom Boom Pow). One of my favorites was Femininomenon. Right at the half was Mountolive and of course, Journey was there, Not stopping believing just like they didn’t let us stop believing when we boarded the bus to a high school cross country meet at 6am on an autumn Wisconsin morning in the 1980’s.

So What, you say? And no, Miles Davis did not get on this list, but I will make sure he is represented next time. A friends’ playlist through bone conduction headphones while doing something you aren’t sure you can actually do is a huge gift of community. I could identify who had picked what song, and Monica, did you hear me laugh when East River came on? 

On Friday an angry patient yelled and swore at me. But I still believe in community. Our local university campus is closed after demonstrations, but I still believe in community. My middle child is in prison but we talk almost every day and I still believe in community. We do not have to navigate alone the crazy fact of being alive in this broken world (thank you Mary Oliver). Michelle, who ran (SMOKING FAST) the half marathon today hung around to see me finish and make sure my weak, donut ass got safely into my car with my incredibly thoughtful husband after the race. 

Regarding donuts, I binged on them at work on Friday. See above re angry patient. Coping mechanisms are a work in progress, likely till the day I die. And when that day comes, I know the community will turn their hearts to my family and friends, and will make sure my patients are cared for. I don’t plan on a celestial discharge anytime soon, but, again with the Mary Oliver: one precious life can zip by faster than Yuja Wang can play a Chopin Etude!

We do not have to be alone. Just ask the Redwood trees who have all sorts of interesting chats over intertwined roots plugged into the Mycorrhizal network. Chats that maybe started 300 years ago. Tree magic.

Driftwood

 I have not surfed for several weeks. Aside from the size of the waves, beyond my ability, I might get clocked by a redwood tree.

Humboldt style driftwood is not for the faint of heart. As with almost everything else in this far Northern California blend of the sublime and the ferocious. This ought to segue into a long discussion about Beethoven, but I shall spare you.

Buster, the second dog love of my life (after childhood pal Brandy, named by my pastor father after his color, not as his porn name, no offense to Brandys everywhere as it is actually cool name), used to bring me beached trees, actual trees, dump them at my feet and say “you strong, capable woman shall now throw this tree and I will then fetch it for you.” Buster was bewildered by my declaration that I was not actually the princess warrior he was picturing.

A few weeks ago Miles (current dog love, bless his 13 year old heart of gold) and I were on a beach walk when a sudden storm blew up. The wind was scary in that “is this a freaking cyclone?’ Sort of way and it did not rain, rather it hailed ice stones that actually hurt. Being exposed on the beach, the first place I dove for with dog in arms was a great big log. We huddled there, still getting pelted but less fearful of being blown into oblivion when there was a fantastical lightning strike and beach-shaking thunder. Miles, who is cachectic and relatively hairless after a grumpy groomer decided he needed to be stripped naked, was shaking and we locked eyes for a second, maybe both thinking it had been a nice life… 

I scooped him up again and scrambled up a dune and God seemed to have deus ex machinaed a hole covered by a bush right over the peak of the dune where we rode out the rest of the storm. When we could finally walk back to our car, me pretty much blue lipped frozen at this point, a sassy rainbow appeared. Nice one Mother Nature! 

Before storm

                                                                        After storm

Today, as we walked among the wood drifted upon the beach, we managed to just miss the rain. January has been making up for our relatively dry winter. I was obsessed with the sky and the way the wind blew eddys of sand. Sneaker wave weather for sure so we hugged the cliff, always with an eye out for an escape route. Rip tides apparent. I miss being in the water, substituting the pool after long work days. Still healing but not the same.

Sky like a paint by number masterpiece, and the strong smell of cow dung. I kept checking my shoes but it was just the way the wind was blowing, exactly picking up the scent and spreading the news, or perhaps spreading the moos.

Diagnostically speaking, it’s been a good week. Just when the dysfunction and drama of modern medicine has me down, I remember the joy of noticing something with my eyeballs—not needing a fancy scan or a blood test—-just seeing the malady and knowing. It’s especially great when there is something that can be done to heal, to help. Pondering the way my brain works, I seem to have a knack for patterns. Reading music, reading EKGs and seeing/feeling/noticing a subtle sign on physical exam. Just don’t ask me to remember a name, a part of my brain woefully underdeveloped, or to remember all the brand names of the millions of medications now available for type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Though if you want to know my super secret memory device for this:

“Some guys are losers” =SGLT2 inhibitors (the -lozins)

“Good looking people surf”=GLP-1 agonist (the -tides)

Driftwood has been useful to humans over the ages, as a supply to build boats and other stuff. It has this lovely, twisty, water-polished surface that elevates it to almost-art. It isn’t unusual on our beaches to see driftwood forts, some elaborately designed. Driftwood is a place of refuge when surprised by a storm next to the not really all that Pacific Ocean. 

And don’t even get me started on the magnificent fact that we are alive, all entangled in the wildness of a universe that produced Bach, the surfboard, Miles the dog, Miles Davis and the warm bath after the beach. Just at this very specific right now moment, things are ok.

Well Tempered

 Johann Sebastian Bach probably wrote some of the well tempered clavier during his month in prison. He snubbed a royal who didn’t want him to go work somewhere else. 

Some of the well tempered clavier was thus written in his head in likely miserable conditions. If you’ve never tried writing a fugue, under the best conditions it’s sort of like being asked to thread a needle seven different ways while blindfolded and standing on your head. 

The well tempered clavier was written before there were pianos. Purists might play it on a harpsichord or clavichord. Glenn Gould plays it like an alien who was actually Bach on another planet.

The 48 pieces come in two book volumes, I’d say 6 eight track cassettes, 4 CDs, 8 LPs and just a blip on Itunes. Each piece has a prelude and fugue demonstrating, yes indeed, a well tempered keyboard. If you start on a C and do it in major and minor and climb up the scale by half notes till B (then back to C again), all those guys sound in tune. It’s math, it’s art, it’s engineering. It’s like that scene where the Von Trapp children sing about deer and sewing. Threading a needle.

When the world is falling apart, I usually rest in the well tempered clavier. Some call it the Old Testament of music. Like “in the beginning” there was Bach. But in the same way the well tempered circle has no beginning nor end, there was music encircling our ancestors. Maybe we sang before we grunted coarse words. 

Bach just happens to tap into my own primordial goo, which seems to be located in the liminal electrical space between my atrium and ventricle and between my motor cortex and my fingers. If you notice I’m well tempered on any given day, thank Bach. 

Prison Bach especially. The guy who threw him in prison was a monstrously rich megalomaniac-JSB actually got off easy compared to some other employees who didn’t wear the proverbial red hat for the Duke of Haters. It’s a good reminder that mean people in power is just a part of the human condition. They might win a little sometimes but in the sense that not a single soul can hold back the long arc of beauty and justice, it’s a hollow victory. A deep well tempers grief with compassionate waters. A well that welcomes all. Please notice who usually gathers at the wells of the world, to tend to the thirst of their children and their community.

Please notice the helpers.

https://youtu.be/HZ_muo3BzI8?si=FNS-CCA2f2LALsYE

The Other Mother

A Poem, or Something, About Mother's Day, Neil Gaiman and Carnivals

I want to shrink inside of myself. I walk slightly askew and my waist has thickened. I gave birth once and parented thrice, I doctored entirely too much. Let me give this advice. 

Don't take me advice, but rather crawl into the hole in the wall leading to the Other Mother where you might find better, button eyes. You might find weird and wild and wise women in disguises. Women baking magic cookies. Aromatic bread rising. Enterprising

Women make poor mothers. Clara Schumann, for example, always had other things to do. The fact is your career and ovulation peak together. And even while neglecting their children, women physicians make two million dollars less than men over their time in the profession.

I will make the concession that being a doctor is not an excuse for prison kid. I did the best I could but it was never enough and Other Mother, the one I dream about, would've put the lid on the drugs and the drugs and the drugs pervading our child's beautiful body. Invading their heart.

Though they say it was not because of us, still we are broken apart. 

Other Mother might have breast fed longer, not rounding on the wards or taking exams. Time off to tickle toes. This mother's mother died just shy of 4 months of first baby's new life. Breast fed at the side of Oma's hospital bed.

So I fled from grief. Running five steps in front of sorrow, its hot breath on the nape of my neck. Big love thrown to baby, baby and baby. Happily ever after in our house by the big trees.

Mighty Other Mother in her perfection, much better than I at protection, I paled in her reflection, my kids demanded an election. Unseat the one with the screaming pager! Real mother, Shoo!

But let's keep her chocolate chip cookies and that one song she sings is pretty good too. You know, "Müde bin ich, geh zur ruh..."She is less than we expected and more than we knew. She took us to see Beyonce. 

And plays piano much too early and too often. Demands perfection but never asks enough. Too white, too worried, too hurried, too busy, too 

Unlike Other Mother. The one with just the right stuff. Like the astronauts in that movie. Like s'mores or peanut butter cups. 

Three points from mid-court, all net, no drama, Other Mama

And yet this is what you get, the one with a stenotic spine, a love of Beethoven, a wish for more and more compassion and kindness, naive and not ever influential in the way, say

The Pioneer Woman is. Or that Perfect Mother on Instagram. @OtherMotherIsBest #ButtonEyes

I would do it better if I could do it again, be the mother that the Other Mother could only dream of being. The mother my three would seal up the wall to magic for, just so they could sit in the solid world of us, made of real eyes, stinky dogs, loud pianos, parents dancing, redwood-fronded, scratched, quarter sawn oak floors for sock sliding. Like some kind of carnival ride of love. Like the Scrambler or Tilt-a-Whirl:- thrilling, nauseating, with your companions shoved up against you with the gravity of life. 

Viaduct Kiss

 Recurring dream: a viaduct from my childhood town appears, I drive over it and something magical happens. One side of the viaduct is safe (the side that goes to my home). The other is some kind of slightly off Terabithia, magical but not always in a good way.

In real life, the viaduct bridges over railroad tracks. Under this viaduct I once kissed a self-identified dirtball. "Why are you hanging out with a dirtball?" said he. I was a practically invisible nerd with braces and hair I did not yet understand how to manage. It was actually a nice kiss, all clandestine. Have you ever been under a viaduct where the slope meets the underside of the bridge and you can tuck yourself in behind a pillar and hide? 

At the beach today there were truck tire marks all over, by the water, on the dunes. THE truck in question was stuck in some impossible position in the sand, truly I do not think it will be able to be extricated unless a crane is involved. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when Dog and I passed by them, as they were doing some maneuver with a rope to try to, well, try to do something that indicates they slept through physics class. We went along our way and spent an hour by the ocean on this luscious day. September on a Northern California beach is a balmy, gentle time. Today was a good day for a beginner surfer, with small, organized sets of waves pealing in regularly. Dog is almost 12 years old and he cannot really run like he used to, but he enjoys this beach as much as anyone can ever enjoy anything. Like joy with a fluffy top knot and 4 stick legs. 

We were passing by THE truck, still stuck ass backwards in the dune, and in that way that any woman on earth can understand, I took a wide berth around it with Dog on short leash. Still, I was surprised when the dog of THE truck rushed us and attacked my old boy. THE people of THE truck screamed at the attacking pup and finally pulled it off, and I just got the heck out of there as fast as I could, in self-preservation mode. I did not even realize till we were part way home that Dog was injured, and bleeding.

A vet visit, $300 and some antibiotics-Dog will be OK. 

This past week a governor enticed some traumatized immigrants onto a plane and dumped them at Martha's Vineyard, then laughed and crowed about it to a rally of supporters who cheered out loud, in public. This is America. Grown ups take joy rides on a serene beach and have animals in their care they cannot handle. People taunt women and children and men who have literally walked hundreds of miles at risk of death to reach our country. Little girls are raped and forced to carry the subsequent baby to term. This is America.

I am nearly 53 years old. I was thinking by this point in life I would have a grasp on what's happening around me. That somehow it would all make sense. But I still do not understand why people are mean. What is the point? And why is it so often worn as a badge of honor? 

When I was 8 or 9 years old, a man called our home and I answered. He said "I'm going to come and kill your Daddy!". Apparently this was related to Dad allowing a group of gay men to meet in the church where he served as pastor. In my dreams, the home where I grew up represents the safe side of the viaduct. But in reality, it was where 8 year old me was introduced to the way someone can assault your space with hate. My parents died long ago (of cancer, not wing nuts, though perhaps their cells mutated in response to the stress of trying to be kind in a fucked up world). The childhood home has had many other owners since. It is reported someone has even cooked meth in my mother's old kitchen. Where we used to eat our breakfast cereal, and bake cookies, and where you could stand at the window over the sink and watch the deer eating my father's garden. 

In my dreams, the viaduct has led to Zion National Park, where I was trying to take a run and kept getting lost. Once it led to a VA clinic that I had to work at and for some reason deliver babies. In reality it still leads to the IGA and from the top you can see my old high school, just sitting there and still demoralizing new generations of teenagers. I never graduated from high school, so maybe the viaduct dreams are the deep anxiety that someone will pull me over on this road of life and require me to complete my PE classes. In my old uniform.

The Terabithia I seek probably doesn't require driving over the viaduct where a dirtball kissed an invisible nerd. Might be that all the magic I need is accessed by paying kind attention to the people around me. That's pretty much what my parents taught me. How we respond to the constant assault on serenity, otherwise known as being a human on earth, is a choice we make. You can cook meth in my Mom's kitchen, but you cannot diminish the lovingkindness she brought into this world. You can want to shoot a man of Christ for being kind to others, but it won't heal your own despicable despair. You can drive over the beach crabs and make a perfectly nice dog whimper in pain, but you cannot take away his pure joy that only seems to increase even though the beach trip has happened a million times before.

You can be mean. I wish you wouldn't be though.

Invisibilidad

 Había una vez, ella era invisible.

I was thinking about the pandemic. Women did the bulk of the child care when children suddenly found themselves at home for a year or more. Same women might also be trying to work. They might have had to stop working in order to support their children in zoom school. It was expected the women would be the ones to do this. Women also did and do the bulk of the nursing, tending to people dying horribly on ventilators in the ICU. Nursing those in the overfull emergency rooms that still cannot accommodate everyone on any given day. Nurses getting assaulted by patients as they do their essential function. A somewhat worn and tattered "Heroes Work Here" sign greeting them as they walk in for each shift. Women are doctors too and they are less invisible but the $2 million in wages missing over their 40 year career compared with the men doctors is yet to be found. 

As my husband and I soon celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, I am thinking too about marriage. Why was I so fortunate to have a partner that makes me feel seen every day? If anything I worry he does not feel seen as he has inhabited the traditional role of stay at home parent during our life together. Marriage is interesting in its original purpose of subjugating women into a role where they need protecting by a man. Particularly white women who are currently being forcibly put back into their role of propagators of the race. It is no coincidence that Roe falls in this era of renewed energy around white supremacy as the creed of our nation.

I might be angry, and I realize that is not very ladylike of me. But I am thinking about feminine power and how it is the missing piece of the healing arts in our country. The data are clear that while we have mad technology in our system of medical care, the outcomes are poor compared to other countries of similar wealth. We spend a lot more on it too. When I was pregnant in medical school the men were befuddled by my very presence. I pumped breast milk in the women's bathroom stall. I pretended not to be a mother so that I could be a resident that people respected. I worked and worked and worked. Privileged as I am, I can see this was not ideal, now, 27 years later. But perhaps more importantly on a societal basis is the parts of me I tried not to bring into my healing art, pushing down my tenderness and compassion for fear of not being seen. As recent as last week a male colleague was chiding me for the work I do, which is high intensity, low productivity medicine that focuses on the goals and concerns of each human being for whom I serve as physician. I think his words were "what exactly is it you do all day?"

If I am invisible those I serve are invisible minus a million. Like some bullies on the playground the world screams this at them every minute. Like one hand clapping I know the self is a mirage. Like hands clasped I know we are more like the trees in a forest, where it appears they are all individuals but if you dig a bit underground you will see they are all connected to each other. My hands play Rachmaninoff and they can palpate a liver. For this I can thanks the many teachers in my life, my root system of people who shared their skills and believed in me. That saw me. 

My anger too is not in isolation. There are whole communities of people and particularly people who identify as women and girls that are strengthening our connections. We sit with each other in silence as a warrior sangha, but since we have powerful presence we do not need words. I invite the 50% of white women who voted and continue to vote for fascism and self annihilation to consider that they could be a part of this sangha. Or congregation. Or root system. Or a girls night out that lasts well beyond the dancing and frivolity.

In medicine, in healthcare, in relationships of healing, the feminine is what we all need in order to see the outcomes improve. A heart transplant is cool. My dad had one, actually. But we also need to notice the women who are dying in pregnancy and childbirth, and now forced childbirth. Are women worthy of living? 

Once upon a time she was invisible. 

Define Blue Eyes

Define fine. Is it pleasing, first-class, thin and wispy or what a teenager says when they are feeling snippy? "I'm fine." Maybe it is not being bombed or maybe it is being bombed and the world actually caring, versus living somewhere, say Syria, that does not lead to people posting supportive memes on social media. Fine is how I would describe a nice human being. Or the Steinway I recently decided to buy. Fine means okay, rare, mundane, or it is furious or it is grains of sand settling in the tight curls of my big, goofy poodle after a run at the beach. A fine speaker gives a solid speech. 

Someone angry with blond hair and two X chromosomes demanded that Ketanji Brown Jackson define "woman." KBJ continued to smile, though I doubt she felt fine, and gently reminded angry XX that she is not vying for a seat on the Supreme Court of biology. But of course, biology is law and politics moreso than science these days, and nine justices get to decide what I do with my body and you do with yours and whether my transgender child should be allowed to live. What defines woman? When I was a tween and giving piano recitals, I wanted to wear tails but was told I could not because I am a girl. When I go to work now, my hair is too short or too long or my body too fat or too thin. It is hard to be comfortable in your skin. There, I defined "woman." I would rather be Circe than the sailors of Odysseus or Odysseus himself. Though it may also be fine to be a swine.

The best part of definitions is they are often wrong. Like the close-but-no-cigar way we all go through life, narrating the events as if we know and understand them. All of us walking about with thought-bubbles like cartoons. If our mind bubbles were readable, imagine the cacophony! Imagine how hard it would be to follow the billions of story lines. I would say to you "did you read what that guy just thought???" 

Imagine having to read Ted Cruz' thought-bubbles.

A little bit ago I gathered with friends to watch the ashes of Dan be scattered by his wife and child. It is the third ash-scattering I have attended, the first two being my parents. Have you ever tasted human ash? Or felt it? It is so weird how they put it in a plastic bag, like someone's sandwich. I wonder if it is the whole person or just a sampling? Is it really that actual person or do they just mix everyone up and dole out a bit to each family? I have never tasted ash on purpose but it does blow in the wind and it is very sticky, and it clings like it is trying to stay around rather than be discarded and separated from other humans. My parents' ashes are buried in our old back yard and sometimes I fantasize about digging them up and reburying them somewhere closer so I can visit them but I suppose by now they have seeped into the soil and fed some blades of grass which a deer then ate, perhaps incorporating it into their milk with which they fed to their fawn who shat and helped a wildflower bloom into neon color. 

My mother kept a very clean house. You couldn't put down a glass and walk into the other room for something without coming back and finding it washed and dried and back in the cupboard. My parent's house was the oldest house in our neighborhood in Wisconsin, very modest, with the best sledding hill in back. Rattlesnakes and rabbits and deer abounded, as did the bees you would accidentally step on while running barefoot in the summer, leading to a justified sting. The piano my parents got for me at age 16 to replace our little spinet was 40 years old when they bought it, and came from the local music store owner's home. It dominated the living room in our house. Now that house has other inhabitants. Turns out one of them over the years cooked methamphetamines in my mother's kitchen. Impermanence defined, and I doubt the ashes of Mom would mind.

The piano is much older than 40 now and me no longer 16. I hauled it everywhere over the years of my life, up 4 flights of a walk up flat in Minneapolis, across the country to California and back again and back again. It is, like all of us, not meant to last forever. Nor will the 1967 Steinway M I hope to bring home soon, but hopefully it will outlast me. I wonder, when human extinction takes place, about music. I think of all the grief around the real possibility of our species burning itself into oblivion, that for me this is the greatest grief of all, that the universe in general will lack Beethoven and Bach and John Coltrane. I am learning that attachment is a sure way to prolong suffering, but the late Beethoven Quartets are hard to release. I would rather not taste the ashes of art and music in my mouth, or have them cling to my skin to remind me about what can be lost.

Define fine. I won't be running the Boston Marathon as planned, due to injury. But I took a nice walk in the woods today and the trillium are absolutely everywhere, so I guess I am fine. I might never run the way I used to, because I am aging and fatigued, yet I guess I am fine. I guess, in my estimation, it is fine to be alive and to feel the cold nose of my dog push against my hand while I scroll on my phone, him trying to bring me into his world and out of the bizarre virtual universe. He also pushes against my hands with his fuzzy face when I practice piano for too long, and I cannot discern whether this is out of the same frustration and disgust my siblings felt listening to me play endlessly in our very small childhood home or if he just really wants to go for a walk. Or wishes a scratch on the head, after which he will trot off contentedly. 

Lately I have been asking people how they define compassion. 

Compassion is a bag of worms feeding the soil that produces astounding flowers and trees that bear fruit that we eat and the sweetness explodes in our mouth and reminds us of Christmas morning. Compassion is open heart surgery with a grafted vessel infused with hope and bitter wine. Compassion is grasping a thorny mess and holding it tight like you might hold a child shaking in fear after a clap of thunder that shakes the foundations of your home. Compassion is letting your mind bubble pop without regrets. Compassion is being disarmed. Being alarmed but not paralyzed by fear, then rolling up your sleeves and rebuilding what is broken. Compassion is taking a walk when you wish you could run or taking your mother's ashes and thanking them the way you wished you had thanked her.

Fine is what you pay when you don't follow the rules. Love is what you use to counter fools. Piano is hard to play when your dog nudges your hand. Steinways are fabulous and grand. I will run again when I can. I remember well the last time I ran with Dan. Both of us carefree in the golden hills of Palo Alto, his early dementia not slowing him down, his blue eyes sparkling. 

His fine blue eyes sparkling.