Hold Tight and Pretend It's a Plan

Brief update:  I had a check-up with the surgeon, I am healing well but not yet ready for radiation. I got a few more weeks reprieve and was reminded not to lift heavy stuff (so that the biggest incision can really heal and I don't get a hernia by mistake).  The best news of all was she said I could go back in the swimming pool and the hot tub -- hallelujah! It has been a long seven weeks since the biopsy when I was forbidden to immerse myself in water but I thought it might be seven weeks more, so I am beside myself with floating happiness. It took a couple of days to get the hot tub back up to temperature, but I was back in the pool the next day, not doing anything crazy (she said to keep protecting my core so I promised not to do the butterfly...which I do not know how to do anyway).   I had my second session with the acupuncturist: another hour of lying quietly in a comfortable position with 20 needles sticking in various places. Half an hour on my belly, with he...

All of us do mundane things, and we do them regularly because that is part of our every day.  In the last few decades, meetings have become the regular mundane thing that punctuates my life -- and I think most people's lives, in some form.  Meetings are the necessary stepping stones to getting things done, to making plans, to agreeing on stuff, and often also to getting to know others better.  I know lots of people who avoid meetings or dread them because they have no "patience for process."  This is silly since process is how we agree on getting from one point to the next, but I understand that our collective experience about process itself is not resolved. Okay, so that's the dry introduction.  It's not really going to get much juicier than that.  I just wanted to tell a story about one meeting yesterday and how we got to that place and what came out of it, without naming names or pointing fingers. In our neighborhood we have lots of agreements, not m...

I give everyone permission to skip this one, as it is likely to be more detailed than interests most, but this blog doubles as a journal sometimes because I like to get things recorded while they are fresh in my mind.  The summary:  I met with a Western medicine doctor and an Eastern medicine doctor today.  They focused on completely different things but nothing that they said was in conflict with the other. It was a super interesting day. By chance, I had scheduled consultations with both the radiology oncologist and an acupuncturist today.  The first one was specifically referred by my surgeon and the second was highly recommended by two friends who do not know each other and whose paths will probably never cross (it took me no time to understand the power of a recommendation from two such wildly different people). This morning I was supposed to be at the radiologist's office at 8:45.  Ordinarily this would be no problem except that I was having a vicious ...

I have been thinking about this topic probably for most of my adult life, and wrote about it during my letter-writing days, and now I have even more information collected after almost sixty years of living in the same spot, practically. I am currently inspired in my thinking because I am reading my niece Julia's master's thesis, which seems to be speaking to me in particular.  She studied and thought and wrote about a much bigger topic -- the idea of home and what it means to people who feel homed and to people who are shifting from one home to another and the sense of threat and danger to people who experience new people coming to change their own sense of home. She takes it even further than that, but I haven't made it to the really juicy parts of her thesis yet. When I do, I am certain I will have more to say. I can't speak to the experience of the immigrant or the refugee. I am the person who is grounded in a home, who has spent nearly all my life on the same piec...

I know I have written about Darryl Wright several times in various venues, but I can't find them right now so I will just do it again. I have been thinking about him during this time of convalescence. He was not a person you would necessarily try to emulate, almost in any way, but he was a model of suffering -- not in silence, but without adding to the suffering of others.  That is not entirely accurate, but that is how I am thinking of him these days. For those who are new to these stories, our farm has a long history of collecting up strays. Interesting people with good hearts who just can't get traction in the regular world or who need a place to land or who just really want to be here.  We find a place for a lot of unusual characters. Most of them don't stay forever but almost all of them get some real benefit from being here for a time.  And of course they all contribute to the general effort of getting vegetables out of the ground, washed, and moved to a new home....

Three weeks ago at this time of the morning, we were getting ready to go to the hospital.  There were so many unknowns.  Today, while there are always unknowns, we are in a much better place.  I am healing well, feeling great, unable to count all my blessings but trying to keep up, and have been enabling this persistent writing addiction. I always had it, but it is truly a presence now. I am off all medications, I can drive, I have attended some carefully chosen meetings (where I was needed but I wouldn't collect up a whole list of new responsibilities), and we have had uplifting visits from Benjamin, Rebecca and Alissa. I even had a piano lesson yesterday, which feels like a huge step because it required me to sit up straight without a break for an hour, engage my whole brain, and focus on learning. I had already gone to choir the day before, so I knew I could do it.  It felt so good to be back, in both cases, and I also recognized that I am not yet 100% better. Tod...

This morning I put on jeans for the first time in three weeks. This is notable because jeans have a waistband and are not appropriate for lounging on the couch, plus mine are stained and dirty, plus they are not my favorite clothes to wear but they are right for the work we do.  I am not going back to work now, but I am preparing to go to Loudoun for a brief visit and meeting, and I don't want to be dressed like a couch potato. I have been thinking for a while about what to do about this blog when I stop having so much discretionary time. I am building a habit around this daily monologue, but I know that pretty soon I will be able to go back to normal life. So, I am thinking that I will plan to cut back to a once (or twice) a week check in. I plan to write on Thursdays.  Could be more, won't be less. Naturally, I have a lot more to say. That's what happens when you start talking non-stop, you just have more and more to share. This could be a hazard. Look at our blitheri...

All this blogging is quite self-indulgent and I am aware of that.  So I am even more aware that telling stories that keep on describing all the good fortune in our lives can become a pattern that is off-putting (like when people spend their whole Christmas letter telling about their spectacular children and their accomplishments). I try to be sensitive to this. With that disclaimer, I want to toot our horn about the farm for a minute. It's about the farm as a business more than about growing vegetables.  But before I even go there, can I just say that Carrie is so great?  For years we have been finding that we share the same brain in many ways. We are completely different people but because she grew up in a family business and had a father with a big personality and has been here for so long, she knows how I think and she also thinks that way. It makes working together seamless and friendly and productive. We are a perfect match for how much we want to work (a lot). W...

Or, owed to Jon. This morning I found that I could roll over onto my right side for the first time since the surgery. Luckily I sleep on the side of the bed that works well with my current abilities -- I can roll to the left and carefully push up and not set off all the alarms and get out of bed without consequences. Anyway, the beauty of rolling to the right is now I can put my arms around Jon, which I did at the first opportunity. Jon and Becca went to Arena Stage last night to a long play that was based on a Henry James novel. The plot was involved, the acting was great, the costumes were amazing.  This morning Jon lay there and told me the whole story and I could imagine it all and understand all the nuances perfectly.  It sounds like such a classic parlor drama, I got it. I would have liked it. But I liked lying there and hearing the story too because Jon was so animated and interested in remembering all the details. Nobody really wants to read a love letter to some...

Compared to people who walk from their home country to find a place in a new country, or compared to anyone who has ever left family and home to start over (etc), this was nowhere near a radical act.  But, compared to other things that I have done in my life, helping to create an intentional community in Northern Virginia was the most radical act of my life.  I hasten to say that I didn't do this myself, it was a major "we" effort. I don't want to tell the story of how we did it, it was 20+ years ago, and it is certainly not just my story to tell.  What I want to think about here is why it was a radical act and what came of it. First of all, a few disclaimers:  this was not SO radical.  This community, Blueberry Hill, is perched in the middle of the high end suburbs and we live high end suburban lives.  We drive cars, we have our own families and private homes.  We are allowed to participate fully in the consumer-driven world that we inhabit. We ha...

I forgot to say yesterday that the doctor also mentioned the importance of stress management as part of healing and being healthy. I protested that I feel like my life is remarkably stress-free and she looked at me, knowing there is no such thing, and said that multi-tasking is hard on the body and brain.  Oh yes, I have heard that. She said that every single one of us is working against ourselves when we multi-task.  Taking regular time to focus on the breath, to clear our busy minds, to patiently sit with our selves, is important.  So all the practice of meditating that I have managed to fit in, it's all part of the treatment.  For all of us.  Sit up and take notice, friends.  It's not just about cancer. ------ Dear Grandma Hiu, The other day when Brian's girlfriend was sitting on the other couch, facing me, I thought of you. Something about her beautiful face and her expressiveness conjured your beautiful face and the way you moved.  Naturally t...

As soon as she finished peeling the glue off my incisions and telling me my options about scar management, Dr. Singh said "Pathology was great!"  No cancer in any of the biopsies, no cancer in the rinse fluid. The tumor just barely got into the wall of the uterus (just 3 cm), much less than halfway through, it is Stage 1-A. I have no risk factors.  It is Grade 2 or possibly somewhere between Grade 2 and 3, so she wants to be conservative and have me go through a brief series of radiation treatments at Virginia Hospital Center. It is very specifically targeted toward the cells that would be most likely to still be harboring cancer, at the top of the vagina, they are incredibly precise in their radiation.  She does not recommend chemotherapy because the risks outweigh the benefits in my case. She showed us color photos of my interior -- looks so shiny and clean in there, but there was a lot of icky infection sticking stuff together.  That is being tackled by the a...

This is the morning of my check-up with the surgeon. I am not at all sure that we will learn anything definitive today -- she may only be looking to see how everything is healing and we may still have to wait for results to learn about what comes next. Rest assured that I will share the news as soon as there is any. In the meantime, this seems like a good time to do a ten day review of this life on the couch. I am rather astounded that this much time has passed, but it has been a busy ten days, considering that I have not left this neighborhood the whole time. As I said a few days ago, rituals have been establishing themselves.  Many of them involve the generous stream of guests who have come to spend some time on the visitor's couch.  I have kept a rough list in the back of my calendar because I like to remember as much as possible.  This morning I did an estimate of the ages of all the people who have come -- not including my own family members who live nearby. The ...

I am going to take the tiniest bite of this topic but it is huge. A few days ago I heard out of the corner of my ear that there was going to be a gathering in New Hampshire to address to issue, once again, of whether organic certification is appropriate for hydroponics.  Maybe that wasn't the actual topic, but that's what I heard.  When I first heard this question years ago, I didn't understand for a moment why this is even a point of discussion. To me it is blindingly clear -- hydroponics doesn't include soil and soil is the first building block, the very essence of organic farming. So the thought of including a system that feeds the plants through infusions of plant food in water confounds me. It is a twisting of words, a prostitution. Go find your own word, you hydroponics people. The real issue is that we all don't agree on the philosophical and essential purpose/meaning of the term organic.  Back in the beginning of the movement, farmers learned and learned a...

Not sure I have ever written the word "fledgling" before but it already looks weird. I feel like a bird who is just about to be allowed to step out of the nest -- but the nest is very close to the ground so I won't need to plummet awkwardly, I will just gracefully walk out to my golf cart. I am so looking forward to it. I have been taking short walks around the neighborhood. Everyone else does that all the time but I am not really a walk around the neighborhood person. I would rather get on the golf cart and go walk around the farm. PLEASE. And while I know this is terribly, ridiculously premature to tell (it's like being one month pregnant and announcing it), I am very excited about a phone conversation I had yesterday. As some of you know I have been writing letters and stories and reports and posts about my world and my life for many years. Way back when I first graduated from college, my father decided to encourage my passion for writing stuff by giving me a rea...

As we coast into the second week of this recuperation phase, there are rituals developing.  Some are subject to change (I take meds every two hours, but we are decreasing the doses little by little and someday that ritual will be a thing of the past) and some are as predictable as the moon.  To set the stage right now, I am on the proverbial couch and Benjamin is on the other one, carefully watching and listening to a YouTube about forge welding. He has it on speeded up talking so it is funny to listen to from over here. It just amazes me that people will take the time to create those videos for people so others can learn every skill known to humans. That is so generous. As I was contemplating this post this morning, I realized that I am conscious that I should not be too brash about how lucky I am.  It can be a form of bragging, insensitive to my friends who have a much harder life than I do. I can think of many people out there who are struggling specifically with c...