the crossroad...

One operates at a peculiar crossroad
where time and place and eternity somehow meet.
The problem is to find that location.
                                      Flannery O'Connor, a paraphrase

The phone rang. My cousin's daughter's voice was low and unsteady. "We just took Mom to the hospital." I had talked to her last week, her life force was wonderfully in tack. Suddenly, my healthy eighty-four year old cousin who walks four miles a day, works out at the gym three times a week and volunteers at the hospital has lost half her blood and the transfusions are not correcting the situation.

We wait for the tests. Two day later: she has an excessively aggressive, acute leukemia. Her choices: "brutal chemo treatments" or do nothing and "die within days."  This is Thursday. God, first of the week? I am deeply shakened. What must she feel? I can't imagine no more talks, visits, no more cousin on this side.

Knowing she has come to a crossroad, I call her dreading the question she may pose. Her breathing is labored. However, she is self possessed, matter of fact but her voice is quiet, weakened. Normally, her energy comes bursting through the phone. Not this morning. Her first words are, "Augusta, frankly I don't have time to die (business, family's needs and hospital work). This is all so shockingly fast. Yet, if this is it, I want you all to be happy for me."

She is no stranger to "death" having lost her husband and her forty year old son within the last few years. Her awareness-veil between here and the "other side" is wonderfully thin. She knows life, love, learning, and awareness continue -- that a mere capsule of dust cannot contain or explain these immensities.  Yet I sense her indecision.

She continues, "I don't know what to do. I am thinking of taking the chemo." She pauses, her voice is strained, "What would you do?"

What bothers me is that I don't know what I would do -- and more importantly why don't I? I have read the books, was a hospice care giver for years, spent a week with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross*, hear from Guides who are certainly not on this side and know in my being everything my cousin does. With our experience why don't either of us know?

As she talks I see a tableau taking place in my mind's eye. A four year old brother is coming up behind his smaller sister. He gives her a forceful shove, caught unaware, she falls to the ground. Disorientated, undecided whether to cry or not, she needs time to get her balance as she struggles to her feet saying, "I'm ok Grandma."

My cousin needs time and space for her balance, wisdom, knowledge and instincts. A cross road with more directions than merely Yes or No -- a way forward that allows for the rich sea chest of probability, possibilities that are not definitive. She may well decide by the second week to discontinue the chemo or she may not. I do not know "where time and place and eternity somehow will meet." I simple do not know the answer for her or for me.

On the phone she is quietly waiting. I reply, "Cousin of mine, 'I don't know' is the answer."


*Kubler-Ross: a pioneer in near-death studies and the author of the groundbreaking book "On Death and Dying" identifying for the first time in western medicine, the five stages of grief.

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karate, a wobbly beginning...

A woman does not practice karate
So that she can fight like a man
She does so in order to be free
to be a woman.
                  author unknown

One day our mailbox contained a notice that karate was going to be offered in the old school a mile down the road. I was interested. My motivation was a neighbor who was a "peeping tom" among other things. The police had received many complaints but could not catch him.  One day, as he drove by he slowed down and eye-balled me as I was hanging out the clothes.  The karate notice came a week later. I needed to learn to protect myself and my children if the police could not.

The first night thirty-two young teenage boys showed up and forty-seven year old, me. Although I was in decent physical shape from jogging, the first night's work out rattled my confidence and left me sore. Later over tea, I told my husband I'd try it one more night. The bruising continued. By the end of the first month, I counted heads -- now twelve young guys and me.

Our dojo (exercise room) was in the basement of the school.  As fall turned into winter, one of the windows was cracked. Continuing to bring bruises home and running through the snow in bare feet, I needed to make the decision. Was karate really for me? Regardless of the "peeping tom"?

One night the Sensei, being a new black belt himself and inexperienced, put me in a sparring match with a young man half a foot taller and about fifty pounds heavier. We were both white belts and had no technique or skill. The guys seemed to want to prove their physical prowess. My goal was to survive their efforts. The Sensei signaled the match to begin. Immediately, I took a couple of hard punches. His technique seemed to be inspired by fights on television, mine amounted to backing up and keeping out of reach.

There are two rules in the ring: we were not allowed to hit the others' head (in theory), nor could we step out side the ring more than twice. If we did the match was awarded to the opponent.

With a bit of male ego assuming a win, his peers cheering him, I needed help. Several more shots of pain. Suddenly, I felt a strength and anger enter me with the instant knowledge that my survival depended on not backing up but hugging him -- keeping my self as close in as I could. "Kia", I yelled immediately, inches before his face startling me as much as him.

I am of light weight and slight build. I knew from other experiences this gave me an agility of movement. With this important fact, along with the "kias" I began ducking and crowding him, forcing him backward. It was a good feeling. He lost his balance twice. His foot was out over the line. Frustrated, he came back charging, absent of strategy. I stepped to the side, shot off a zuki and pulled it inches from his face -- just lucky, maybe. Jumping back he stumbled. The third time his foot slipped out. The dojo went silent. I went silent. I had won.

I could not wait to get home for tea and tell my good news -- I belonged in karate. And that night the threat of the "peeping tom" shrank significantly. Think of what I could do with a little skill.

The words of a wise old friend a week later also assured me. I asked if karate was ok for me. She replied, "Reality is how you see it. If you think it is beneficial it will be. If the situation is seen as negative-dark then you will move into that.  Let me remind you, "Thought is reality. It is of your own making."

I left her cottage thinking, "Hmmm, that applies to everything."

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Did the pansy's know?

"let all go -- the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things -- let all go
dear
so comes love"  e.e. cummings

I let a painful situation go on waking. I have reached the place where life is healed, where past and present does not exist and all is love. Here is where "I fly my part of the sky" without human interference -- mine. Lifting my hands in release, a bird takes flight outside my window.

Then a smell ticked my nose where no smell existed a second ago. Turning my head I see two pansy's by my bed.  Perhaps they know the significance, the time it has taken me, tripping over myself, needing to offer help which wasn't wanted. In their deep velvet-yellow, do they feel my pain, my joy of release?

Ah yes, maybe, they are an intelligent-heart wearing the pansy's petaled form.

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"A very magical day, I learned to speak crow." Jacob

                                                                                                                

Hello Grandma Ana, 

It is Jacob. I was out this morning......  It's Saturday, ahhh, one second.... I don't know the date, like it's Saturday (emphased). It's July. Why am I telling you that?  Ummm, I wonder if I could have a talk with you as these crows have a nice little conversation. I say "Caw Caw" (enthusiastically) and they say "Caw Caw" (equally enthusiastically). They answer me. We go back and forth. We are talking. I speak crow, I just realized. So it is very, very interesting and I can't wait until you get this message. I'd just like it if you could call me back soon so we could talk more about it. I think you have my number. Yes you do, just in case......(number)

Ok, well, the crows are very kind. I would like it if you could call me back. (The phone goes dead, his grandmother waits.) He returns, explaining, "I was just trying to find them but I couldn't. They were flying above me and we were talking. It was very, very magical this morning.  I really like the crows now that we have met each other, more. When I want I just go "Caw, Caw" (more enthusiasm). They will answer "Caw, Caw," that's if there are any around.

 (Pause) I am up stairs with no windows open and I just learned, they hear me! Now um, I have no windows open. They have great hearing! I just learned too because I am upstairs.  I'd like it if you could call me back. Oh, that I have said three times. *


*An early morning telephone conversation on voice mail from a seven year old grandson.

age puzzles me...

Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate.

Florida Scott-Maxwell

When my grandmother was in her sixties, I grieved because she was “old”. I studied her wrinkles, grey hair, and the brown spots on her hands. In my young mind, she appeared rather ancient. I feared she might die at any time.

In her early eighties she took a trip by herself across Canada on the train, stopping in various provinces to visit family and friends. A year later, because of her husband, she entered a senior’s home.  I grieved.

This section of her life lasted twenty years. In the "home" her reputation grew. She visited the sick, read to “those who can’t see”, and brought joy to many who otherwise would have been lonely and isolated. When she was a hundred, she heard from the Queen (a send out I am sure) and her Member of Parliament paid a visit. We laughed when she related how she had challenged him with humor. During my last visit with her, enfeebled somewhat from her hundred years plus, she wrapped my four young children in love, asking them about their lives, always about their lives.

Months after she had passed, I continued to hear from others the caring she shared and the difference she had made in her eighties and nineties and hundreds. 

Age puzzles me less. I often think if only I had not “written” her off as “old” twenty-five years ago. How young she would be at seventy-five.

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We should all be born at seventy-five.

Her birthday was three weeks ago. I watch her on the front porch settling into her wine, knowing the struggles of her life as she turns toward me.

"I love being seventy-five. I love that I'll pass over, god knows when. I am not in a hurry. Do I ever like me like this. I have never been more excited."

Watching the Nova Scotia cape boat moving out of the cove (lobster season) she continues. " I love that boat, up in the nose, down in the stern going to take on the North Atlantic. I have nothing to prove, I've taken on the Atlantic.

I love being seventy five -- maybe not three years ago. Life comes or it doesn't. Enthusiasm for (her new project)  puts gas in my tank, in my carburetor. So much in the moment is just the joy of thinking about it. That is enough whether it comes to fruit or not -- this act of enjoying my enthusiasm. Yes, seventy-five is one of my favorite ages to be."

"Why", I ask, as I knew the time when it was not?

She looks to the ocean. I wait. Then she softly states, "Very hard to describe. I am disconnected from what I use to be. They no longer anchor me down: family, duties, friendships, yet I so respect those who are. It is simply that the leaves have come out on the tree again this spring.

Adding, "I am so pleased with this positioning -- naked inside and maybe even out. We should all be born at seventy-five and go backwards. It doesn't matter about size, age, color, problems we have. It is what it is. Simply that, it is what it is."

The boat is out of sight, the wine is gone and she goes in to prepare supper. I sit in a smile. The new spring leaves are flashing their green in the evening breeze.

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this year's wildest wave ...

As if another "person" appeared out of the depths...  Roethke

From Roethe's poem in my last writing, I asked, "Where is my "wildest wave", where is this life that surges forth, sometimes shockingly unexpected.

I have just had a tsunami experience. A completely foreign part of myself, one I have never met before has arrived: with passion, infinite abandonment and pure joy. Up and down the piano keys she flys or tries, playing maritime fiddle tunes, a rousing version of "Oh when the saints" and "Mother's got a squeeze box." My budding skill can barely keep up with this rush of rhythm that wants to be all over the piano keys, one end of the 88 to the other, feet tapping, piano bench rocking.

What shocks me so delightfully, is that I have hated the piano since I was seven. During five years of lessons sweat often trickled down my back, as a ruler awaited little fingers if they couldn't find the keys. I concluded then I was my teacher's worst student (even though provincial music exams said it wasn't so). I also decided, I was the least musical person I knew, until...

Two years ago my daughter, who was learning the fiddle, wanted someone to accompany her at a non-existent speed. That was definitely me. After six decades of dedicated disinterest, I knew three chords. We didn't play much the first summer. She showed me some finger positions. Yet, immediately, I began to feel surges and urges, beats and rhythms from some mysterious inner wind bellowing my joy-sails. A little mix of rag time and honky tonk. What great fun. My fingers could not resist dancing up and down the keys but my budding knowledge and skill could not keep up. It didn't matter. With fingers muffing notes, faking chords I was rocking.

Two years later: "I got the passion." I can't wait for that fiddle to come out of the case. The other night I was rag timing something; at the end, laughing I zipped my finger up and down the key board in what I thought was a brilliant run. Then with arms raised and shouting the most joyful "yo" ever articulated, I happen to look over to the sofa. My grandson with eyes sparkling, little five year old butt bouncing like his grandma's, arms up, hardly able to contain himself, shouts,  "Oh Grandma, you are crazy."

And he is right, I am crazy: with passion, amazement, disbelief as I sway out on this year's, "wildest wave alive."

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