Mother's Day, Shmother's Day

When I was pregnant, I was in the weekly class for pregnant people the hospital put on. I was large, my legs were swollen and I was exhausted. Also scared. As we were all nearing our due date, the teacher asked how we were feeling. One woman said, through tears, "I just love being pregnant SO much. I am really going to miss this." And I thought to myself, what the hell is wrong with me?

Myth: Being pregnant is the most wonderful thing that could happen to any woman in her life.

When my Mom was in her early 40's, I was in grade school. We lived in a neighborhood that let me walk to school. After school, she would often still be at work as a nurse and teacher. Oh my father was also at work but always till dinnertime and no one actually would've even asked where he was because of course he is at work, as he is the man. So I would come home and let myself in, and go out and play, and when I came back an hour later the house would smell of the dinner my Mom made immediately upon coming home from work. One day I came back from my afternoon of play and the house was empty. I sat and waited for another 30 minutes? 5 minutes? 2 hours? Who knows. Mom and Dad came home, and I yelled at her (not him). I was so mad. Turns out she had been at the doctor being told she had breast cancer. I was still mad, because Moms are supposed to be there exactly when you need them, every single time, no matter what.

Myth: A little cancer shouldn't stop a Mom from being home on time to make dinner.

When I was in residency, my husband dropped me off one morning on the top of Parnassus, where the fog was swirling around the Hospital on the Hill. My son, all of two, was in the back seat. He gazed up at the Mecca of Medicine, pointed and said, "Look! there's Mommy's house." He is in prison now.

Myth: Working mothers hurt their children.

When I was at a show at our kids' elementary school, I was chatting with another Mom. She did not recognize me, though knew my husband, the usual dropper-offer to the classroom. She looked me in the face, and with a very sad tone says "I don't know how you can work the way you do. I could NEVER leave my children like that." In my mind I was thinking "well, I think helicopter mothers who never leave their child's side for one minute are pretty creepy."

Myth: Women should stay at home with their children.
Myth: Women should work and model being strong for their children.
Myth: Women can have it all.

When I was offered a job at a major university medical center, my children cried but we thought it would actually be a good move for the family. When the principal of the school where my troubled son heard, she came up to me and said "I can't believe you would think about moving. Doesn't he have enough troubles already? He is JUST starting to make more friends." We did not move. Later, an occasional remark was made to me about things would've been better if we had. I actually did not make the move because I wanted to stay here and work, but WOW,  people really do say the meanest and most thoughtless things.

Myth: Women want you to give them advice on how to be better mothers.

I have never been a big fan of Mother's Day. It is nice, I suppose, that people take the time to acknowledge the mother figures in their life, but let's think about what Mother's Day really tells us:

1. You should be getting cards and gifts from your kids on mother's day. If you are not, what is wrong with you?
2. You should have a relationship with your mother that is as precious as the treacle of a Hallmark greeting card.
3. You haven't had kids yet? What is wrong with you?
4. Your Mom is dead? Oh how sad, now move over while I order another mimosa at brunch.
5. Moms are super heroes. They can raise kids, go to work, clean the house, do the laundry, go to every PTA meeting, bake cookies, and get their kids into elite colleges.
6. It is a sacred thing to be a Mom, and a sacred thing to have one.

All that said, there is nuance in motherhood. Is it beautiful? Oh my gosh, yes, yes yes! Except when it is not. Is it rewarding? If you are looking for a reward, perhaps motherhood is not for you. But the process is rewarding in the same way anything else challenging and real in life is rewarding. For instance, I just spent several months training for a marathon, only to get injured at mile 15 in the race. So though I failed in one way, I still can look at the months of work I put in and the moments of joy I had along the way, and feel like I can go on to the next marathon or maybe a half marathon because marathons are just plain crazy.

I love my children. I wouldn't trade being a Mom. But that's just me and we seriously need to stop making women (and children) feel like Motherhood with a capital M is some kind of magical fantasy of bliss. A mom just has to keep showing up every day, no matter what the universe throws her.

My proposal for Mother's Day:
Screw Hallmark, and see a Mom doing her thing; her hard, every day, non-glamorous thing, and ask her what you can do to help.

Confections

-for Vera

When the banana slug on the porch step

just above where I sat

had the audacity to reach down

for my donut, a chocolate-glazed old fashioned

starting to melt a little in the sun,

my life as the mother of Vera flashed before my surprised eyes.

The weight of my baby's head in the palm of my hand.

Her fat fingers grasping sand

in a San Francisco park.

Hair flying, running, smiling

at an inside joke like a Zen Master.

Crafting words,

describing the absurd world,

running faster with egg-beater gait 

like Seabiscuit.

Quick wit with pointy

knees and elbows

shoving Dad out of bed on stormy nights.

Big sister

with brown eyes that

remind me to notice

every moment.

The quickening, like insistent kicking,

not gas,

while I sat in my wooden front row medical school seat

looking at histology slides,

the cells of the liver,

where pregnancy met hepatology.

Not knowing then how I'd grieve when she

no longer could be lifted 

to rest on my hips while we walked,

skinny, tan arms wrapped around my neck.

Redwoods, runs, books,

slugs in sun attempting donut thievery.

Mundane, underrated, interrelated 

miracles of confection and conception.

The Eighth Amen

Messiaen wrote this piece called Visions de l'Amen after being released from a prisoner of war camp in 1943. Seven movements, each an Amen. Hearing it played live just last week by Daniela Mineva and Ryan McEvoy McCullough ,I felt displaced from the mundane, emotionally and physically moved beyond the little box I call my life. I got bigger and I contracted. Messiaen was a synesthete. He saw music in color. I see letters in color. Like so much else in my life, I can almost taste the brilliance  the world can offer but it is like a small tongue touch of the tip of a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. A is red, but I cannot hear the color of A in blue (sky, eternity) as did Messiaen.

Prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII-A was probably a cold place. While there, with cold fingers, he wrote Quartet for the End of Time. When released, he wrote Visions and played it with his student and later his wife Yvonne Loriod.

When I heard Visions I was not quite sure what could possibly come next and knew, sitting in my audience seat as the piece neared completion, that I needed a plan of action. Thus I declared that we would have a bowl of ice cream when we got home and it would be "The Eighth Amen".

Eight is my favorite number. It does not perhaps carry the spiritual significance of seven, and three, but if you turn it on its side it is infinity so something mystical therein lies. If an eight was turned on its side it would likely bounce right back up again, much like a Weeble Wobble. By age 8 I knew I would be a concert pianist. By age 18 I knew I would not be a concert pianist. By Age 48 I didn't care and just played piano anyway. 8 is a great age when you have kids. Benjamin has at least 8 years more in prison.

Eight by eight is sixty-four
Someone's knocking at my door
I think it might be Messiaen
More likely him than Benjamin.
To hold my son at home again,
That would be the Eighth Amen.

Speaking of empty nests, my last dragon flies away soon. Six and change years old when I met her, she has added infinite richness to my life, and eight new gray hairs for each day I have known her. Imagine being dropped on planet Arcata from planet Hunan. Our town, though professing to be progressive, can be racist, I have learned. It has lovely trees and mostly very lovely people. It rains a lot and when I look at the ocean I get bigger and I contract. When I run for hours I listen to books and music and the waves and the rain and the rednecks shouting at me and I think about my children and how I used to think it was just about love and a good nest but now I know only each person can find their own happiness and path, no matter how precise a map you draw for them

Home from China at half-past six
Pale new parents just perplex,
Yet their only aim:
Her words like fire saying
"I know exactly who I am"
That would be the Eighth Amen.

When I run for hours I get excited about chocolate milk. At about mile 18, I start to text my husband with a place we might meet when I am done, and can he bring chocolate milk in a glass bottle, the local brand that can then be used later to hold the flowers that one patient always brings me from her garden. These look nice on the window sill in the kitchen, as you stand rinsing your coffee cup in the morning and watching the birds at the feeder. Next to that window is a crayon drawing, framed, done by eldest daughter around age 8. It is a portrait of the mother with a large cup of coffee, larger, in fact, than the mother herself, and she is declaring "I can drink this." I lead by example in all important matters.

April makes her twenty three
Which makes me
Older than I was when I could run
Sub one thirty for a half marathon
If only I could do that once again
That would be the Eighth Amen.

Since I was a twenty six year old new mother I have learned eight things. Seven of them are irrelevant and the eighth is that I know nothing. Speaking to my wise Godparents on a recent visit we discussed, in reference to the Messiaen piece, whether truth and beauty must always be paired in Art with a capital A. It is a worthy question, but the only answer I can honestly give is I don't know what truth or beauty is. I mean I don't know for sure. I have some speculations and opinions. The Messiaen seemed to have both but it wasn't pretty in the way things can be pretty. The trillium are out and certainly pretty. The outfits Beyonce wore at her concert were gorgeous. The smell of my husband's fresh baked bread hitting me upside the head when I walk in after a day at work is divine. The Messiaen Vision de L'Amen was excruciatingly beautiful and maybe even true. He wrote it in the color blue and played it with his wife to be. After leaving Stalag VIII-A.

This year makes it twenty seven
Married-years and today, my significant
other, I proposed again
And you said yes, even knowing 
How I act on call. Married my best friend.
Also known as the Eighth Amen.

Spiritually speaking, I feel best when I run in the redwood forest. Spring mist is inhaled by the trees and they stand in attentive disinterest. I am so small and they make me contract further but my heart expands and my standard poodle pants and I dodge mud and slugs and it is better. Better to be in the rain and to have to clean the dog in the bathtub later than to miss it all.

The Eighth Amen only needs to be invoked. The Eighth Amen is a prayer, a song, a declaration. Something blue and eternal. A dragon's breath, a warm place to reflect on everything that just happened or that is happening now or will happen next. True and excruciatingly beautiful. Like an ice cream headache.

Irish Blessing, Christchurch

Be in heaven a half hour
Before the devil knows you are dead
There your terror has no power
Welcome brother

Path rise up to aching feet
Sun on back
Beckons us to turn our cheek, so we
Welcome brother

God hold you in the palm of His hand
Not like in Christchurch
Or a basement in Birmingham
Welcome brother

Respect from neighbors
Joy surrounds, peace abounds
Semiautomatic rounds
Welcome brother

Healthy children grow your family tree
Innocents
Like Mucad Ibrahim, age three
Welcome brother

Tea by the fire
Roof deflecting rain
A cozy funeral pyre
Welcome brother

Wind blowing at your back
A gentle moving forward
A state of grace, you lack
Welcome brother

Old man at door
Brown eyes smiling
A grandfather! Open-hearted, you were
Welcome brother

Wisdom despises
Lies of "good people on both sides"
So may the Lord's fist close tight around you until your hate explodes into nothingness
Leaving your soul such as it is in agonizing flames for eternity
No brother of mine

3/16/19

When An Elder Dies

I took this the day he died. (Jan 2019)

My Uncle died recently, aged 89, a retired Lutheran minister.
His Dad, five brothers and brother-in-law (his sister's husband) were all ministers as well.
My Dad and uncle were very close. I remember listening to their late Saturday night phone calls as a kid. Late, because the long distance rates were cheaper. Saturday because they were polishing up their sermons for Sunday.
They both preached about and more importantly lived their lives in support of peace and social justice. I recall being so confused when I realized how much of the vocal Christian world spews hate. This was not the tradition of Christ I saw, which involved helping other people, all people, no matter who they are. I suppose my first lesson was round age 8 when I picked up the phone at home and some angry man delivered a death threat aimed at my "daddy". Not cool.
I was very close with my Dad, but he died when I was in my 20's, about 6 years after a heart transplant. My uncle came and stayed with Dad for the 3 months he had to stay at the transplant house after the surgery, as my Mom had to go back to work. My uncle and aunt were also there with us at my Dad's bedside when he took his last breath. Both my father and his brother were reverends and I don't mean to be irreverent, but some of my Dad's last words were a fart joke. Which I shall cherish to the end of my days.
Mu uncle became like a second Dad to me, and my aunt a second Mom, and my cousins like siblings. How fortunate I feel to have this bonus family! That puts up with me! I am pretty sure my uncle was teed off at me our last day together, as I was being a bossy doctor type in the hospital. There is actually a picture of us flipping off the camera (sorry--I know this is irreverent), but my son, with whom I shared this picture, and who happens to be in prison, pointed out that while I was flipping off the camera, my uncle was technically flipping off me.
I have a son in prison and I gave the finger with my beloved uncle on my last day with him. Do you guys think I am ready for sainthood yet?
The other thing that happened that day is he almost said he loved me. My uncle (unlike my Dad, who told me pretty much every day of my life that he loved me, usually several times, and I do this to my kids and they find it so annoying, one of them actually threatened to block me on texting) NEVER responded in kind to the phrase "I love you." It just was not in his vocabulary. So after the middle finger incident, I was saying goodbye to him, and I leaned in for a long hug, him in his hospital bed and now both of us crying. I said "I love you" and I'll be damned if he didn't say "me too". Which I shall cherish to the end of my days.
I keep trying to figure out what I have such strong connections to people I love but have not been able to be the world's best parent. Maybe this skips a generation? So my kids will be stellar parents. When they are ready. And out of prison. And stuff. Family is complicated and life is short and biology thinks it is key but I actually don't buy it.
What I learned from my parents, and people like my Aunt and Uncle is this:
Do kindness to others. Fight the good fight. Risk yourself to stand up for justice. Have a sense of humor. Know some good swear words in German. Love like it is your last day on earth, even if the word "love" is a confusing one to you.

When life happens to me, I write about it. So here are two poems. Dedicated to Rex, my Dad, my Aunt, my cousins, my children, and everyone else who might feel inclined to find solace and inanity in the strange beauty of words.

Pantoum on Exchanging Sermons

Brothers exchange sermons
over lemon yellow phone, cord
taut from wall to couch where little brother lies in socks,
cradling the words between shoulder and ear.

Over lemon yellow phone cord
God's Gadflies gather biblical gems,
cradling the words between shoulder and ear,
scrawling ideas in the moonlight.

God's Gadflies gather biblical gems
late Saturday nights.
Scrawling ideas in the moonlight,
while I quietly curl in a chair and spy.

Late Saturday nights,
cost of long distance calls less dear,
while I quietly curl in a chair and spy,
they preach justice, peace, human rights.

Cost of long distance calls less dear,
my pajama arms clutch teddy bear,
they talk justice, peace, human rights,
sometimes in German.

My pajama arms clutch teddy bear.
Only rarely do they swear,
usually in German,
For my sake perhaps.

Only rarely do they swear,
about cancer and war,
for my sake perhaps,
or about that terrible used car purchased on a dark rainy night.

About cancer and war,
so far as I knew,
or about that terrible used car purchased on a dark rainy night,
these men deal in mysteries.

So far as I knew,
they would always be here,
singing "O Canada" in German.
Brothers exchanging sermons.


Old Soul Flying

When an elder dies
Maybe his soul flies
In search of familiar
Smells of waxed wood on pulpit,
Of Mother's bread baking.
Hearing wolves howl
On an icy Canadian road.
Old soul feels sun through the parsonage window
And the heartbeat of a soft baby rabbit
Thudding on hands which brush
Briefly against his sweetheart's when he hands her the gift.
Hands that will brush often over 63 married years,
Wet with grief's and laughter's tears.
Old soul swoons with the top of each
Child, Grandchild, Great-grandchild's head inhaled,
With the hypoxia of mountains scaled.
A piece of old soul resides in India's soil,
And along American highways, convertible top down,
Pulling into a Wisconsin town.
32,485 meals filled old soul
Plus black coffee from favorite waitress
Cup warming hand,
Fueling courage to stand up for peace.
Cracking jokes with youngest niece,
Who feels old soul brush away tears,
A model of life well spent.
When an elder dies,
I hope the coffee is eternally excellent.

Message of Love, Redux

Etymologically, the apocalypse just means revealing something. Maybe it will be something nice?

On our woods run today, Miles was tense. He always is in the woods. You never know what is lurking in the trees, those towering Tolkienesque creakers who on a windy day sound like the sound effect they use for a door in a haunted house. The air carries scents of a multitude of dogs, past and present. Dogs who have trespassed on the kingdom Miles rules and that threaten our very existence. Sometimes a salamander darts by which is terrifying and confusing, and when the horses appear, God only knows if they are actually pestilence, war, famine and death with sneaky riders who say things like "good morning" or "thank you for having your dog on a leash."

Tomorrow being the last day of the year, I keep feeling like I have forgotten to do something. Going through the list:
-new calendar purchased? check
-a couple of scary goals set for 2019? check
-self-review of 2018 bringing new levels of concern about my adequacy as a human being? check

What if 2019 reveals itself to be the best season of Saturday Night Live ever known? I feel like that would directly correlate with End Times.

Lately many of my hospice patients have been younger than I am. Also lately, I keep trying to channel Wendell Berry and find peace in wild things when I worry about the fate of my children but instead I end up waking up, bolt upright in a cold sweat and wondering what I can do to fix everything for everybody including my children, the children at our border and the relative youngsters in hospice.

What if it turns out mindful meditation is the answer but I am too restless to sit still? What if God meets me on the other side and tells me I wasted much too much time worrying but He/She forgives me anyway and it turns out even poodles aren't anxious in heaven so all our runs are off leash?

I bailed on my January marathon but have signed up for one in April. It happens on my Mom's birthday. I will be running it with one of my best friends. Though truth be told he will always be one and one half steps ahead of me. I am not worried though.

Big goals: marathon, piano recital, don't worry so much.

What if I qualify for Boston but don't get in the race because it is so impacted? What if I forget where I am in the middle of my piano recital? I mean I won't forget where I am in terms of my place in space, as I will be very aware that I am sitting on a piano bench at the Morris Graves Museum of Art probably in some kind of fancy dress. But I might forget what comes next in the Beethoven Fugue or the slow movement of Barber, and then what will I do? On Christmas Eve I was playing in church and the veneer faux-ivory top of the A below middle C flew off during Scarlatti and hit me in the nose. True story.

I worry about racism. And misogyny. About government shutdowns, refugees being barred from entry to a safe haven and how on earth any of us will afford healthcare. I worry that people are too mean to each other and miss out on so many beautiful things. I worry that my piano will die and not be a good candidate for resuscitation. I worry that my son won't live through prison, and my daughters will never trust that the world can be a good place to be given that people like Brett Kavanaugh get to act as a life-appointed moral compass for our seriously off-the-rails country. I worry that pushing 50 I may be past all hope of a marathon PR. I am already worried about my next colonoscopy, which is in 5 years.

The weird thing about aging, besides colonoscopies and empty nests, is how the self shrinks but the spirit expands so that the sack I walk around in feels both less significant and more alive than it ever has before. Chrono-astrono-geographically I am but a blip. But what a blip it is/was/might be!

One way or another, the apocalypse is coming. Its a revelatory certainty, with a dash of hope. I am not worried. Tomorrow is the last day and

OH!!! I know what I was forgetting!
Designate a theme song for 2019.

Life may be unkind but I refuse to stay down.
When love walks in the room,
Everybody stand up.

Professor Marathon B. Training's Ted Talk on the Purpose of Living in This Miserable World

My dog and I almost died when he ran through an electrified barbed wire fence and chased steers and was going to get shot and I ran onto the field and got charged, head butted and thrown by an angry steer. Three times.

I do not need a lecture on the idiocy of letting my dog get into this predicament. He got away from me before I could leash him. I should probably be shot and might well have been. I might still be depending on how people respond to my most recent editorial regarding the NRA and their command that doctors "stay in their lane", albeit soaked with the blood and paralysis and brain injuries of their shot up patients. But I digress like a cow digests.

This story is not meant to be funny or cute. I could not talk well for a few days from all the screaming taxing my larynx. I still have whiplash, my ribs hurt, my sternum hurts, my vertebrae hurt, my femurs hurt. I could not do much but cry for the first 36 hours after this event. And me being who I am I was really worried about the steers. Except that one who was taking absolutely no shit from anyone. He will be fine.

And it completely threw me off my planned long run this week. It was all I could do to drag myself to the kleenex box to mop my tears. A twenty plus miler was not going to happen. Runners crack me up. It becomes all about getting the miles in, logging it on Strava and not getting too far off course. We do special incantations to avoid injury, and read essentially the same three articles over and over again in Runner's World (inspirational runner story, how to run your best 5K/10K/marathon, the best shoes of the year). The gravity of near death is only heavier by its impact on the marathon training cycle. Though it might be said that racing around a field, screaming, being attacked by an enormous, muscled, angry animal while people with guns are telling you what a fuck-up you are is one heck of a workout.

Running the last couple of days, finally able to move and breathe and not feeling quite as traumatized, I find myself wondering if I should bag this planned marathon, COWL it quits, STEER myself in a different direction, and/or just take some time to stop and smell the manure.

Marathons are the best, beastly and blessed. They involve just the right number of layers, so that you can start without freezing and shed later to avoid heat delirium. At the end they give you inadequately sized reflective blankets that in my opinion should be replaced by cozy, footed onesies, especially when you have to walk seventeen thousand more miles to get to your gear. Seriously, at the NYC marathon, the volunteers have to cheer people on to keep moving AFTER they finish the marathon for the long walk to the UPS van holding their stuff, which seems to be parked in New Jersey. Marathons teach you patience. How to manage pain. When to push, when to hold back. How to time bodily functions. And how to bore your friends and family to death, talking about marathons.

Once upon a time a friend and I were running in the Palo Alto Hills, back before the trails were paved and highly populated by physically active Stanford polyglots. Back on the west side we encountered a herd of cattle. Every single one of them ceased cud-chewing to fix us in their freaky stare and it stopped us in our tracks. At the time we joked nervously about the danger, but I now know we could well have been stampeded and back then we would not even have been able to post about it on Face Book! Morally I remain neutral on the right of cows to intimidate and attack when you cross on to their territory. Like mountain lions on trail runs or sharks after paddling to the outside, it is just part of the deal. It is not something to like or hate or spend too much time thinking about.

Taking away the hubris of marathon training and the image of guns, human rage and bovine wrecking balls, I am left with what is our common Achilles heel. That is to say, vulnerability. If this was film noir, it is a small child standing alone in an empty place with no clear ground or sky or boundaries or beginning or end. Probably somewhere in Sweden.

If this were a dating website, our bios would all read "attempts to deny being vulnerable".

If this were a poem it would read
I could be dead

Having watched my mother puke up chemotherapy all night then go to work the next morning
And my father get his entire heart replaced like it was some rusty car part
And my son dive into a destructive vat of drugs and violence
And my patients struggle with diagnoses while trying to maintain some semblance of dignity
I sometimes wonder what the point of life is.

When my daughter asked me that very question I answered the only true thing:
To be kind to others.

Running marathons is nice too, mainly because it teaches you stuff, like any hard thing does.

It will be awhile before I can look a cow in the face again though.