Periodicity of Sloth

I like Sunday Drivers, on Sundays.

They remind me, as they plod along at 45 mph in the fast lane on the freeway, on which I’m trying to race to the Farmer’s Market, that I could choose to chill, to lay back, to let the world come to me at its own pace without me hurrying out to get it, as quickly and as resolutely as I possibly can. What would it matter if I didn’t get the best parking space, the springiest greens, the sweetest berries, and freshest fruits. That’s all dependent on too many factors beyond my control anyway. My going fast won’t fix anything regarding that produce which the farmers have already rushed to market in hopes of getting the best prices.

What will it change if I

s - l - o - w

w - a - y

d - o - w - n

?

Periodically, it’s good to switch things up, right? Whether it is my pace, route, or mode of transportation, it creates new synapses to switch it up.

In Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards tells us how it can help balance our brain hemispheres when we use our non-dominant hand to, for instance, brush our teeth, or write our name, though maybe not to sign checks.

The idea of a sabbath appeals to me; a counter pose to the bustle of busy-ness most weeks bring, and setting aside a time, not to do, but just to be. Don’t just do something. Sit there!

Sunday drivers may have their priorities straight: To spend a day in leisure pursuits, visiting folks, conversing, discussing important topics, relaxing with a good book, playing, and dancing to a different drummer’s slower rhythm, to help re-set the hot busy-busy with a chillaxin cooler and easier tempo. Maybe it makes the week ahead less hectic. Maybe it fills a well where we can drink deeply of a refreshing brew throughout the next six days.

It isn’t important to me which day folks put aside to lift the needle out of the groove in the record (Wow! am I dating myself… but, hey, at least I’m dating! As long as this is not my vinyl resting place!) As it is, I see Sunday drivers on the freeway every day of the week.

Many cultures build in a day of rest and spiritual development or renewal. Saturday, Sunday, Fun-day or Choose-day. No me importa. I’d like to try it. One day of rest. My family of origin didn’t do that, nor did my husband’s. Consequently, we’re not so good at resting, recreating, and recollecting ourselves.

Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, has just passed. It’s a day of atonement. When we break-down that word, it makes sense to me: it’s a time to be AT ONE. Maybe At-One-ment with all there is? For most of us that means putting aside grudges, so we may be close to all beings, and recognize our concurrent residence with all we know on a singular blue marble, third planet from our Sun/Star, on the fringes of a magnificent galaxy, in an unknowable and vast Universe.

Sunday drivers deserve not only my compassion, but my gratitude for reminding me to slow down!

The Blood Red Super Moon of 9-27-15 would have been missed by me, had I not been out with neighbors at a FUNdraiser, slowed down enough to go outside and LOOK at the sky. Ol’ ginger colored Cheshire cat smiling down on us warmed my heart.

May you find the tempo that lets you stop to smell the roses, see eclipses, and your fellow human travelers on this beautiful spaceship earth… even if only periodically.

To Sloth!

The One That Got Away

Is it Chance that has me sit beside the young woman and her father at the table farthest from the stage, way at the back of the dining hall? The camp director is giving us a run-down on the day’s activities. I wince as the the air goes jagged with the microphone’s piercing feedback. Twenty-seven families and two dozen volunteer counselors register the toe-curling sound also. The young woman next to me does not. She sits placidly, her head supported by the chair, her slender hands with colorfully striped fingernails resting very still on the table. I touch and admire her meticulously manicured nails, and tell her I’m glad she is here. She does not respond. Dad speaks for her, saying N is very sleepy.

At a camp weekend sponsored by WE CAN Pediatric Brain Tumor Network, one doesn’t ponder or ask about the necessity for the wheelchair. One plunges in with light-hearted introductions. I cannot help but notice the single focus gaze emanating from this dark-haired daughter whose eyes are riveted on her father. There is no other communication between them save her continuous fixed witnessing of her father’s face, and his intermittent return of that penetrating contact. He makes small talk with the rest of us at the table. Mentally, I ascribe meaning to the look on the daughter’s face: Adoration. I will find out later, how much more meaning her eyes were conveying.

Introductions made, among the eight of us at table, the whole-camp game-fest begins. In the bustle of each table coming up with a team name, a song, and an animal sound, I register, but only dimly, that the mother has come to whisper into the ear of her husband. Shortly afterwards, the father, waves a vague goodbye, and prepares to wheel his daughter away from the table and out of the dining hall. Just before they exit, I again make contact with the quiet one, saying simply, as I imagine that she is going to their cabin to take a nap, “Qué duerme con los angelitos.” May you sleep with the Angels. I have an eerie premonition that I may have overstepped a linguistic boundary, as if Sleeping with the Angels may be a more permanent state for this fourteen-year-old girl child. Off they go, away from the noise and chaos of the dining hall.

* * * * * * * * *

The crowd breaks-out into the age groups to which we’ve been assigned and the day’s activity periods commence. Parents gather in the dining hall, to meet with intuitive, knowledgable, and compassionate Dr. K, while social workers and volunteer counselors gather up each group of youngsters - some of whom are patients, others siblings, to find our rooms or outdoor areas where we’ll be for the next two hours.

The infirmary is an indoor space and mercifully air-conditioned. We five counselors and our nine 1.5 to 5-year-old charges appreciate the coolness. It is HOT in Livermore, this September Saturday. Our space has been set up with a play-dough table, book corner, building block/Lego area, puppets on the couch, and me on a blanket on the floor fingering chords on my guitar while the young-ones strum it. We make up all sorts of new verses for Wheels on the Bus, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

One of our kids is virtually blind, so she takes in her world by bringing it within two inches of her face, or into her mouth. We must wash each toy she has tasted. Another, with double hearing aids, seems enamored of the sound of the running water, so runs to the sink in the main room at every opportunity to turn the water on, her giggles like a tinkling stream. It seems to soothe her, or perhaps just delights her having the power to make adults get up and turn it off. Drought consciousness makes us surprisingly spry.

Because the infirmary houses the nearest bathroom for a few of the other gathering places, its glass door opens and closes many times during our use of the room. The interruptions make it hard to sustain attention in any of the play areas. For some of our youngest ones, every time the door is opened by a counselor with one or more campers who need to use the loo, it is a reminder to her or him that s/he is with a bunch of strangers, and that mom isn’t here, but went out that door!

One of our youngest, E, a boy not yet two-years-old, is having a particularly rough time with each interruption. He runs to the door as it closes and he cries and cries. Each of us volunteers tries her/his best to soothe, commiserate, reason with, or distract young E. We are fortunate that his four-year-old brother is also in this youngest group. I ask C if he’s willing to give his little brother a hug. Little brother’s ear is on older brother’s chest. I imagine he is being soothed by the familial smell and the sound of C’s heart beat. I crouch beside the hugging brothers and begin patting a rhythm, chanting softly something I learned recently from one of my colleagues: “I can hear my heart beat, I can hear my heart beat, Listen to the rhythm of the freedom song. Listen to the rhythm of the freedom song. When I feel that beat in me, it can set my spirit free. When I feel that beat in me, it can set my spirit free.”

During the course of our two hour morning session, and two hour afternoon session, we sing that chant together more than ten times - each and every time the door opens and chaos ensues. C gets used to suspending his making snakes with play-dough or building towers with Legos, or strumming my guitar, to hug his little brother, or simply lets the little guy hug him. By the end of the day, many of the kids are singing the heart chant to themselves, patting their chests.

* * * * * * * * *

After dinner, the counselors transform the dining hall. First it becomes a theater, with chairs facing the stage, for the “We Can Do Anything” stage night. We never call it a “talent show.” Kids are empowered to tell a joke, sing a song, dance, play an instrument, hula-hoop, do magic - anything! Parents and counselors are moist of eye from the joy of watching the children shine and be loved-up by heartfelt applause.

Chairs are then put to the side and the dancing begins! Camp director Mike plays DJ and camp appropriate songs from Electric Slide to Macarena to Pharaoh Williams’ Happy Song are beamed over the loudspeakers and everyone who wants to dances, wielding glow sticks. During the dance, I have a wonderful conversation with a nineteen- year-old whose speech is very slow as a result of his brain tumor. I will my ears to slow down, so as to catch every word. He tells me of his triumph beating dad sometimes at games of chess. I observe he is also a gifted engineer, as he figures out the tricky part about fashioning the glow sticks into bracelets.

My beloved runs his Pun and Games activity on the big screen TV, to one side of the stage, to the delight of the non-dancers and resting, recovering dancers. By 9:30, the ones still standing are encouraged to head to bed to rest up for the final activity periods and all-camp-closing on Sunday.

As the counselors, social workers, director Mike, and the good doctor K are in the final debrief Saturday night, we are told that N's family has taken her home for hospice care. There is nothing more that can be done for her medically. There is un-ease in the air. This is the nightmare each family fears.

* * * * * * * * *

We live close enough to this camp in Livermore, that we easily drive home to sleep, which Pun does Friday night, while I am with our granddaughter. We both enter our home Saturday night - emotionally and physically spent. He returns to camp Sunday, while I tend to other commitments.

I awaken Sunday morning thinking about N. I am haunted by her look that lingers longer than any other mental snapshot of my fourteen hours at camp. I hate cancer.

Sunday afternoon, after church services, a friend and I share a bite to eat and a stroll. I confess to her my hatred for cancer and how emotionally wobbly I feel in the wake of the news that the one camper who got away from the table could not get away from cancer. The family delayed leaving long enough for N’s seven-year-old brother to go to his age group in the garden to say hello and goodbye. This is reported to be a huge breakthrough for him. So often, siblings of children stricken with this equal opportunity destroyer called cancer, pull so far into themselves, it’s hard to extricate them and learn what’s really going on in their hearts and minds. In the case of this sibling, he is spared a long period of witnessing in-home hospice care. I’m glad of his reach-out to his peers, and hope that he may return to a sibling camp.

Sunday afternoon the camp director calls us to say that N died Sunday morning. She is, indeed, sleeping with the Angels.

I’m left with the uneasy feeling that I wish there was more that I could have done to ease or acknowledge the family’s pain. I wish I could have seen the deep truths of anguish and wrenching goodbyes N’s gaze was conveying to her father. I wish I could have seen into the future and let the family know I would be holding them in my heart pocket. I am holding them, but it went unspoken.

The opportunity was one that got away.

Mentor Me, Margaret

Inspired by sitting next to the woman who facilitates the writer's group twice monthly. At this Sunday's Service

Pure of pitch
True in tone

During eight brief decades
Her gifts she’s honed

Alight in the pew
Beside her, enraptured

I hear hymns of honey
Her sweet voice has captured

Teach me, Ms. Margaret,
I pray, to sing clearly

Show me the path
You cleave to so dearly

Is it your faith
That all will be well

Gives the tilt to your chin?
And a stride that won’t tell

The insults and injuries
Life surely has dealt you?

What is your magic
Please, tell me true

Such dignity beams from your
Form and your countenance

Clearly, you are a woman
Of substance

Mentor me, Margaret
I’m searching for meaning

Beyond daily maintenance
‘though I shan’t be demeaning

I want something more
That I can hold on to

Something at core
As burnished as this pew

Is your strength born of pain
Or having to tussle

With challenges that have
Given you muscles

To bear with equanimity
Each and every adversity?

You show hospitality;
Welcome diversity

God grant that I reach
More decades than these

Numbering closer to seven
Than six, if you please

Would that my voice
Become a bit bolder

Like yours, dear Margaret
As I too become older

May I also exude warmth,
Eyes a-twinkle with light

To inspire as you do
Courage and calm despite

The slings and arrows
Of outrageous fortune

I’ll have what she’s having
May I now name that tune?

Thank you, dear Margaret
For forging a path

That speaks to my heart,
That knows no wrath

Sing with me, dance with me
Bring me along

No cold pedestals,
In soft hearts you belong

Ya Gotta Have Heart

Four climate zones in one day is invigorating! Going to cool Muir Woods, on the second day of September, from Oakland Hills where it was about 85 degrees starting out at noon, was an exercise in “let’s make the best of a disappointing situation.” Turns out that even mid-week, Muir Woods National Park is a huge draw for tourists and local hikers. No place to park. My L.A. pal and I followed the double-yellow-brick-road-line out of the park area and toward Green Gulch Zendo Retreat Center, about a seven minute drive down the winding road.

What a beautiful acreage they sit on! Organic gardens with row after row of flowers, espaliered apple trees and broccoli, collards and kale, oh my, invited us to kick off our shoes and steep in the tranquility.

My old flip-cell-phone would not have allowed the documentation of the courting ritual you might notice posted here, but the new phone, that’s smarter than I am, does!

Ya gotta have heart, so enjoy the slide show of what Andrea and I saw first Wednesday in September.



By the time we got to the beach it was FREEZING for these So Cal gals! Fog obliterated the sun except for the narrowly focused brilliant arc-light tracings across the dun colored hills. Pelicans filled their bellies - diving into the spraying sea. Two nubile nine year olds body surfed in the waves. I ventured over to some tide pools at the edge of the cliffs to see what I could see before the sea's high tide could seize me!