• Category Archives Family

  • Making my way in

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Hanukah. Candles. Dreidels. Gifts. Menorah. The Maccabees. Masada. The lamp that remained lit. Lights. Devali. Christmas. Hanukah. Kwanza. The Yule Log. All that brave standing against the dark. Standing with the dark. Only two weeks to the Winter Solstice, the best day of the year. For me. Yes, the light becomes greater after. But on Solstice night darkness reaches its apotheosis for the year. Fertile, restful, creativity fostering darkness. And to the Shadow. I sit on Shadow Mountain, yet I have a Shadow Mountain within, too. In the darkness.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My inner Shadow Mountain

    One brief shining: Marilyn and I went up the walkway to the synagogue last night as children came out clutching bags filled with gifts from the Bizarre Bazaar, a free shopping area for Hebrew School kids needing Hanukah gifts for parents and siblings, items donated from the congregation over the last month, and Ellen, looking weary, glad that it was over, ready for home, gave me a hug.

     

    Been tossing an idea around since I’ve started doing the sabbath. Why not a week where I can go anywhere I want? Down to Taos and Santa Fe. Over to Bryce Canyon or Moab. Down to the four corners area. Over to any of several wild spots in Colorado. Mountain towns. No dog to fuss about. I can just turn the key and go. But I don’t. Inertia. Maybe a week out of the month where I can make short trips would get me out of my house and on the road. Might work.

     

    Making my way in. Probably me mostly, but not only me. I’m a bit further into CBE. Wearing my kippah, yes. Mezuzahs, yes. Menorahs, yes. Last Friday’s service and the odd dissonance with the Christmas concert in the same space on Sunday, yes. But also Rich commenting on my dvar torah. Israel as a koan, a lived paradox. Joan giving me more jokes. Softer. Jamie a bit more open, friendly. It is not only me. I’m being folded in, granted access in a more open way.

    There’s also that feeling of inner calm. As if I no longer have anything to prove. Which I don’t. In part. Coming home to this remarkable group of individuals, this sacred communion of friends and acquaintances. In part. Saying yes to 76. Yes to being a widower. Yes to enough. And meaning enough as good enough. Plenty. Playing that back over the arc of my life. Good enough. Well done, good and faithful servant.

    There is, too, Kate and her gifts to me. This house. The 401K rollover. Her blessed memory. Ruth and Gabe. Her love. They fold into this calmness as well.

     

    Costa Rica. The new Canada? I know folks looking at land down there. In case, you know. Trump. Not me. Even if the worst happens somebody needs to be the loyal opposition. Especially if we have no loyalty at the top. Besides. Moving? Meh!

    What a time. A rising Ocean. A shrinking democracy. Wars in the Ukraine and Israel. Damn, dude. No wonder marijuana and hallucinogens have begun to get legalized in more and more states.

     

     

     

     

     


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Politics Travel

  • A Shortie

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Tuesday grateful: Choice day. Immersion. The prayer on the third immersion: Shema Yisrael. Adonai Elohenu. Adonai Echad. A drop of blood. Some conversation. Then, lunch at Yahya’s on E. Colfax. Kate, my guide on this journey, the one who went before me. A bit, a tiny bit, of anxiety. The unknown. A bit, a larger bit of excitement. The unknown. A day of inner change. Ritual. Thousands of years I will be part of. All my friends here and out there.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Choice

    One brief shining: Heard the alarm, snuggled back into my warm blankets thinking oh today, said the Shema, stayed in bed a little longer, groaned a bit as I do in the mornings, old man noises I call them, rolled out of bed, picked up my phone and my life alert pendant, ready to change my life.

     

    Short one. I went to Seven Stones cemetery yesterday, looking at possible memorials for Kate and me. A pleasant visit. Met a woman who had been an officer at Hickam 1995-1996. Saw all the options. A beautiful location, one I would choose if it didn’t cost so damned much. On considering the likelihood of any one visiting the site the money doesn’t make sense. We’re talking minimum ten thousand dollars. Going up as far as you want. Including a $2500 opening and closing fee for putting an urn in the ground! I mean, come on. All of our dogs are there except Rigel and Kep. That’s why I thought about it in the first place.

     

    A good workout yesterday, too. My back remains calmer. Not absent, but much less intrusive.

     

    I plan to write a second entry today when I get back, so this will be it for now. Got to get dressed for the mikvah. Then, undressed.


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Health Judaism

  • Religion and Its Cultured Despisers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Tara. The Mikvah. Shema Yisrael. Adonai eloheynu. Adonai echad. Prayerful humility. Being a new Jew. The Sabbath. Jacob wrestling at the Jabbok Ford. Zornberg. Great Sol lighting up the Snow on the Lodgepole Branches. A crisp, clear and blue Sky. The Iliad. The Jacob cycle in Genesis. Israel. Me. Soon anyhow. In shallah. All the Dogs. And their human companions. Wild Neighbors.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Books

    One brief shining: Read an article yesterday about increasing nones, yes nones not nuns, in particular among Millennials and younger, which prodded me to remember Friedrich Schleiermacher and his book, Religion and Its Cultured Despisers, then to wonder why I, a man almost as far away generationally as possible from the new nones, chose to embrace a religion while others flee them.

     

    No. This is not a question of doubt about my choice. It’s firm and almost ritualized. Tuesday. It’s about those cycles of history when certain institutions get shunned, disbelieved, set aside as archaic, over with. It’s about me and my choices over a lifetime and why I’ve made them. Mostly though its about religion and those who would be nones. Not relevant to those who would be nuns.

    Three times I have rejected institutional religion. The first. After studying philosophy and finding Christianity’s arguments dissolved in the acids of logic. The second. After finding Christianity’s claims dissolved through love of my son. The third. After finding liberal religion, Unitarian-Universalism, had no there there for me. At that point I turned to the Soil, to the Bees, to heirloom Tomatoes, to Rhizomes and Bulbs, to Kate, to Dogs, to Great Sol and the Great Wheel. Became a pagan.

    On Tuesday I’ll make my fourth teshuva, return, to an organized old religious tradition. You could look at this and say why can’t he make up his mind? I mean, geez. Really? Fair enough. Although as I look at this pattern, I see something different. I see a man who could not let go of a search for the sacred, the holy. Who was not satisfied. But also one who kept his heart and mind and soul open, willing to learn, to see what he was looking at.

    Could I have gone on to my death as a pagan, devoted to the Soil and my Wild Neighbors, to the Great Mother who birthed us all and to whom we return? Yes. I could have. That’s why my pagan heart will still guide much of my search for the sacred and the holy. I will not stop listening to the Mule Deer, the Elk Bull, the crashing Waters of a Spring Maxwell Creek. I will not stop seeing the holiness in Black Mountain or in the wide Pacific or in Great Sol.

    Yet my heart, which guides me now more than my mind, could not escape this. I find the sacred, the holy, the divine, in other humans too. And so many of those humans: Alan, Tara, Susan, Joan, Jamie, Ellen, Dick, Ron, Rich, Cheri, Marilyn, Irv, Veronica, Mark, Lauren, Karen, Sally, Nancy, Ruth, Gabe, Kate of blessed memory, Leslie, Rebecca, Anne, Luke, Tal, Iris, Jamie Bernstein, Stephen, yes all of these and more I know but not well, are all Jewish. When I walk into the sanctuary for a service, it is my friends who make it holy. And my heart, this insistent and stubborn heart/mind-my lev said follow them further.

    Not only that. But, thanks to Kate, eight years of holidays, learnings, immersion in the Jewish world. Of seeing how dogma simply does not exist in a Reconstructionist Jewish frame. That these folks are seekers, searchers too. And willing to investigate, rethink, reimagine. Everything. Yet to still celebrate that search in a three-thousand year old vessel which carries great wisdom about how to be human. In other words, how to be sacred.

    I know. I admit I’m drawn to the prayers, to the rituals, to the careful and unusual hermeneutic of Torah study. That I find comfort and even solace in them. That’s the monk in me. Yet the pagan, the pilgrim still on the path finds food here, too. I am not alone in my insistence on finding the sacred and the holy in the Mountains, the Streams, the Black Bears and Mountains Lions. I am also not alone in finding the wisdom of the Rabbi’s, of the authors whoever they were of the Torah, of the whole Tanakh, a living stream, one way of seeing not only what I’m looking at but what I’m looking for.


    Commentary on Religion Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism US History

  • The Kindness of Strangers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Friday gratefuls: The kindness of strangers. Prime rib. Mashed potatoes. Corn bread stuffing. Green salad. Charcuterie plate. Urban Farmer. Downtown Denver on Thanksgiving. A solid workout. Snow and cold. 11 degrees this morning. Flocked Lodgepoles. Black Mountain obscured in fog. Fog last night driving home. Snow falling gently. Good sleeping. BJ and Pammy. Diane. Recovering. Mark in Hafar. Mary in K.L. My son and Seoah in Songtan. Me on Shadow Mountain. A good Winter storm.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow and Snow Plows

    One brief shining: After parallel parking for the first time in a while, poorly, I closed Ruby’s door, looked over at Union Station and walked away from it toward the Urban Farmer which sits at 17th and Wazee, downtown Denver had cars in almost all parking spaces, lights were bright, and folks walked the streets hurrying to this meal or that bar when I went in and said, Buckman-Ellis for one.

     

    Thanksgiving day, 2023. I had decided a month ago that I wanted to eat a good meal in a fine restaurant downtown Denver. Why? Jon died a year ago and we had Thanksgiving up here with Jen, Barb, Ruth and Gabe. My usual Thanksgiving was with Jon and the kids, sometimes my son and Seoah joined us. I didn’t feel like repeating last year’s meal, but I wanted to do something special. So. Downtown, fancy restaurant.

    Though. Ruth called and invited me to Thanksgiving dinner. Her last at home before heading off for college. She cooked. Mia, my granddaughter from another mother came, too. It was a quiet meal. I couldn’t hear well so I didn’t join the conversation as much as usual. I enjoyed the food and the company.

    Afterward we played a hand of Uno. I said I needed to get home before dark, so I left a bit early. As I walked out, everybody came with me. Ruth gave me a hug. Gabe ran in and hugged me. Reminded me of that awful night when Ruth found Jon dead. Mia gave me a hug. Ruth and Gabe gave me another one. Sweet. Jen watched, much as she had when Ruth and Gabe ran to me when I arrived the night Jon died.

     

    The Urban Farmer buzzed. Silverware clanked. The hostess asked me if I would be ok with a hightop? No. She led me to a two top down a corridor beyond the bar. In my imagination I sat at a two-top in a quiet corner, eating, reading. Nope. A family on my left, an odd couple on my right. Three tables across the way with families. A busy, busy place. Wait people, bus persons, bartenders, chefs moved in and out of swinging doors. Every table in the place was full and before I left they lifted two sliding doors and opened yet another whole room for guests. Not quite the intimate, secluded meal I had fantasized.

    I did not want Turkey. Why I went to a steak house. Prime rib. Decided on it because I like it and it was Kate’s favorite. I could imagine her being pleased with it as much as I was. Delicious. The Corn bread stuffing equaled any I’d ever had. It was a fixed price meal. $90. Reasonable with all the sides and the salad and the charcuterie plate and the chocolate cake at the end.

    My waitress, a Latina, took good care of me. I noticed a young girl working as a bus person who moved fast, taking plates over here, clearing tables there. Always moving. I gave my waitress a five and told her to give it to her because I enjoyed her work ethic. My waitress smiled, said, “We call her Speedy Gonzalez!” A very sweet part of the evening because Speedy Gonzalez beamed the next time she came past my table. Thank you she mouthed.

    Took out my credit card after the last bite of the cake. My waitress sat down next to me and said, “You’re good. A table already paid your bill.” Wha…? I slipped her a tip and said, “Well. That’s something.” Didn’t say why. Maybe because I was an old guy eating alone on Thanksgiving? Or, just a kind gesture… I’ll never know because they were gone. At least I think so. I was a bit flustered. Left me smiling on Thanksgiving. Something to be grateful for.


    Denver Family Feelings Fourth Phase Holidays Weather +Climate

  • A bit more on choosing Judaism

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Alan. Tara. Joann. Rabbi Jamie. Mezuzah hanging. Spiritual autobiography. Beit din. A drop of blood. Three immersions in the mikveh. Luke 4:18-19. The Devil. The crossroads. Robert Johnson. John Lee Hooker. BB King. Muddy Waters. Howlin’ Wolf. Etta James. Billie Holiday. Strange Fruit. Racial justice. The South. The West. The Midwest. The East. The United States of America. Democracy. Its enemies in our midst. Its champions. The old pale males.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Immersion in the mikveh

    One brief shining: Check your doorframes, are they wood or metal, I’ll need a hammer, nails or screws, we’ll talk about thresholds and liminal spaces, going out and coming in, there’s a prayer, we’ll get the mezuzah’s hung.

     

     

                                  On Tuesday morning the 28th of November. At Temple Emanuel in Denver. Its mikveh.

     

     

    A bit more on the ritual of becoming a Jew. The beit din, court of judgment, takes about 40 minutes. The three people involved Rabbi Jamie, Joan Greenberg, and a second rabbi read a spiritual autobiography I’m in the process of writing. At the court they ask questions of me based on it and on my awareness of matters Jewish. They confer, make a decision about admitting me to the tribe. After that a drop of blood from my private parts. Then, the mikveh.

    Three immersions. The first one, with all body parts in the water. Floating, feet off the bottom, fingers spread. Water needs to touch all exposed flesh. After the first immersion, I’m a Jew. The second immersion is one I have to do as a Jew because it is a commandment that I didn’t have to follow until the first immersion. A prayer is said. Then, the third immersion. I repeat the Shema. Dry off. Get dressed.

    A naming ceremony. I have chosen Israel for my Hebrew name. It means struggles with God which names my inner life. It is also the name Jacob gets after wrestling the angel at the Jabbok Ford, the parsha I chose. I will be given my Hebrew name which will be Israel ben Abraham and Sarah. All Jews by choice have Abraham and Sarah as their direct Jewish ancestors.

    Walk out with a new name and an old community now different for me. I will be a part of it forever and a day.

    A big morning.

    Appropriate to the Shema which starts with Listen, Israel, I have a 1 pm appointment with my audiologist that day, too.

    I’m excited and happy. Can’t say why but I feel I’m stepping into a civilization, a culture into which I fit and which fits me. Never intended to do anything like this again. Ever. Yet here I am.

    Veronica Grunig will go through the ritual the same morning. We’re sponsoring an oneg, an after service celebration on December 1st. We will also get called up during the service to hold the Torah for the first time and lead the congregation in prayer. This is an aliyah, an honor available only to Jews.

     

     

     

     


    Denver Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism

  • I call bullshit

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: My son. Jon’s estate. Probate. Still not over. Good sleep. Luke. Tarot. Astrology. Jamie. CBE. Becoming a Jew by choice. Israel. Hamas. Gaza. War. Peace. Gravity. Epigenetics. Genetics. A Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Angels in America. Oedipus. The Bacchae. Jason and the Argonauts. Odysseus. Telemachus. Penelope. Eumaeus. Jesus. Paul. Luke. Mark. Matthew. John. Moses. Abraham. Isaac. The angel at the Jabbok Ford. Struggle. Revelation. A calm heart, a clear mind. Palestine. The Nakba.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son as Jon’s probate representative

    One brief shining: Jon died over a year ago, his ashes remain in a plastic box on a shelf here in my study, his retirement account and mutual fund account still frozen by his death, messages flickering back and forth among my son, Jen, a financial advisor, and me the last details of a life cut short by angst and meth.

     

    Colorado law on beneficiaries after a divorce. Complicated. Paper this and paper that required. Divorce decrees. Powers of Attorney. Copies of a pension plan document and a mutual fund document. Then decisions up the ladder in a financial affairs company. All will work out. In time. So. Many. Steps. My son, a saint for his brother whom he loved unconditionally.

    Many twists and turns among the living. Those I know. Many. Late life gender transition. Brain bleeds. Illness. Joining a tribe. Monitor Lizards and Monkeys outside a Malaysian home. That white Camel Mark has befriended. APEC in San Francisco. Bringing the U.S./China tension close to home.

     

    Call from my doc last night. All will be well, all manner of things will be well. Sort of. We’ll check my blood panel again in two months, ratchet down my Synthroid dose to 100 micrograms from 112. Echocardiogram today to check out that aorta and the walls of my heart. Had my blood drawn yesterday to check PSA and testosterone levels. Exercising. Sleeping well. You know. Old people stuff.

     

    I push back against thinking young. I’m not young. I’m 76. I’m old. I want to think old in a healthy, vibrant way. I want to be who I am without needing to reclaim past eras of my life. Sure I have my medical issues. Most of us do at this age. Yet I get up each morning, write, eat breakfast. Go about my day as a man, an adult responsible for himself, his house, his relationships. I have assets that the younger me did not have and could not have. Stored knowledge. Experience of joy and grief with enough of both to know how to navigate them. With authenticity. Long friendships. Having lived long stretches in different places. Deepened inner knowledge.

    No. I do not want to be young. Do not need to be young. I am me. At 76. This may seem like a trivial distinction but our culture, even some of the medical advice I see wants me to turn my gaze back toward my forties or my fifties, to imagine myself living as that man did. In that way we live longer, better. No. I live best by knowing who I am right now. And living my best life now. Other cultures, most cultures, have know this to be true, obvious. Revered the elderly. Ours tries to rip our wonderful reality out from under us in the name of long life or psychic well-being. I call bullshit.

     


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Health

  • Some Exercise, Some News, Some Celebrating

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Summer’s End Moon (1% crescent)

    Sunday gratefuls: The Wizard of Oz. The Seventh Seal. Wild Strawberries. Casablanca. Dracula. The Wolfman. Horror of Dracula. Seven Samurai. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Time the way it comes. Not by fiat. Wendell Berry. Rilke. Cold Mountain. Hokusai. Giotto. Tolstoy. Nabokov. Whitman. Frost. Wordsworth. Coleridge. Cezanne. Monet. Van Gogh. Rodin. 1001 Arabian Nights. The Odyssey. The Iliad. the Divine Comedy. Shadow Mountain. Downtown condos.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Feeling stronger

    One brief shining: The treadmill comes to life, its broad rubber belt whirring on its neverending round, my tennis shoes hit it, again and again, my leg gets a hitch, muscles warmup and the morning’s workout has begun.

     

    I’m beginning to dig myself out of the deconditioned hole I dug for myself over a long period of avoiding resistance work. I no longer feel weak, unable to do things. I’m stronger and less achy. Even my dingy left elbow seems to have improved. Three workouts a week, starting with resistance after a brief warmup on the treadmill. Then cardio afterwards. About 50 minutes total. This week I plan to go to three sets of resistance and one additional day of cardio only. My mantra has become, it’s worth it. And boy is it ever for me.

    My mood also improves because moving sends those endorphins to the brain. Yeah. That’s part of it. Another bigger part is the tangible improvement in my day to day. Another significant contributor to an elevated mood? Knowing I’m taking care of myself. Put those three together and working out becomes worth it.

     

    A week filled with news from folks I know. Paul’s brother, Joe Strickland, got removed from his episcopate. A long time acquaintance decided late in life to transition from male to female. Kate’s sister Anne had a brain bleed requiring a couple of holes in her head to reduce the swelling. Jerry had foot surgery. A friend had the first signals of getting old. Should he keep his keys? My boy and Seoah spent three days in Okgwa over a long Veteran’s day weekend. Diane mentioned San Francisco’s preparations for the APEC summit there this next week.

    Life pulses, throws changes at us daily. We have a chance to be new each morning because the world is no longer the same as it was when we went to sleep. And, neither are we. That river Heraclitus mentioned. Ya know?

     

    We’re getting close to my favorite period. Holimonth. When the temperate climates show the world what it takes ritually to survive four seasons. Thanksgiving. Advent. The Winter Solstice. Christmas. Yule. Kwanza. Divali. Hanukah. Gregorian New Year’s Day. The Posada. The Epiphany. It’s the best time of the year. For me at least.

    We take a deep bath in the mythic world of God’s born in humble places, light driving out darkness, darkness triumphing over light, family, long pilgrimages and sudden awareness. Great music. Food. Entertainment. Seeing family and friends in a festive setting. When Holimonth’s over we can move into the next year reminded well and often of the amazing, the wonderful, the loving.

     

     

     


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Great Wheel Health Holidays

  • Aural Prompts

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Val. Who I think may have been hitting on me. Bless her heart. Zojirushi rice cooker and its first brown rice. Equanimity. Silence. Faith. Middot. Mussar. Emunah and Clouds. Hearing the Voice of the Wind, of the Snow, of the Wild Neighbors, of the Storm. Life in its immediacy. Life as a temporary gift. To cherish. Renaissance music. Cool nights. Gregorian chants. Chiropractors. Ellen and Dick. Heidi. Mountain Jews, my community

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Right now

    One brief shining: The crucifix, bronze and distressed, hung high above the five singers dressed in white tops and black bottoms, two good friends, Irv and Joan, both Jews, joined I learned later by at least one other Jew, as they sang, paradoxically, a high mass from the time of Queen Elizabeth the First, the haunting medieval music somehow transcending time and faith to place us all outside the Episcopal Church in which they performed and in that pure realm of music’s ethereal and ephemeral reality.

     

    Went to St. Laurence Episcopal yesterday to hear the 27 minute performance of Irv’s Renaissance singers. One of its members referred to what they did as serious fun. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy medieval music, early music. Reminded as they sang evoking both a time long ago and yet a time relevant to the present moment. This music is, to my ear, sparer than most later music, focused on a spirituality, not only tonality. I could feel as I listened the voices of the thousands, millions perhaps, that had sung and will sing about the world we rarely see because we know not what to look for. Tibetan and Buddhist chants. Throat singing. Jewish services. Black choirs. Voices raised in cars and at home. We need these aural prompts to sharpen our sight, to encourage us to see what we are looking at.

    Afterward a wine and cheese reception at Marilyn and Irv’s. I got there a bit late because I went home to pick up a book for Joan, a contemporary Korean writer’s short story collection. When I walked in the crowd had already been hitting the wine, so the first hello Charlie got taken up by others, then everybody. Hi, Charlie! I felt well welcomed.

     

    And, no. No news on the testing front. Still “in progress.” I’m prepared to live into any result, continuing my life until it comes to an end, either soon or late. No, not resignation. The opposite. I’m not letting go of this gift until it decides to leave my body.

     

    Looking back a bit. Joan and Albert’s first yarhzeit. Seeing Lauren and Kat, the two bat mitzvah’s from Thursday. Their bat mitzvah service would have been on Masada, as my conversion would have been in Jerusalem. I missed it because of my appointment with Dr. Gonzalez. I gave them chocolate bars from Sugar Jones where I buy my weekly truffles. Ruth at the Blue Fin, smiling and laughing, caring. Irv and Joan singing. A buzzy happy crowd at the reception. A good weekend. A very good weekend. Not in spite of my lagging test results, but because of my life already under way.


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Health Judaism Music Myth and Story Shadow Mountain

  • Through a dark wood I have already wandered

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Blue Fin Sushi. The earrings. Driving back up the hill, into the mountains. Those who would alter time.  More light in the morning. The gentle curve of Black Mountain against a blue-white Colorado Sky. Sally. Jews. My friends. My family. Learning to live with yet more dissonance. Quest Diagnostics. Slow on this one. A good workout yesterday. Yetzer hara: oh, never mind. Let’s rest. Yetzer hatov: It’s worth it. No news yet on my test.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: A stable and happy Ruth

    One brief shining: A blonde-bleached Japanese young woman with elaborate tattoos asked me where I wanted to sit, no not out in the middle, here along the side, yes that will be good, Blue Fin Sushi logo under layers of polyurethane, put my flannel overshirt back on, and slid onto the naugahyde, a deep blue, here comes Ruth, I got up and hugged her so happy to see her smiling, bedecked in rings and necklaces, bracelets, and ear jewelry, her hair its actual brown for now.

     

    In a way Ruth is like the prodigal son. She leaves the world of happiness and teenage life behind on occasion, leaves the rest of us behind while she struggles with what her mind visits upon her. But when she comes home I want to slaughter the fatted calf, bring up the best grains, fruits and vegetables, lay them all before her. Hoping as the father in the New Testament undoubtedly did that she will stay with us this time.

    Last night she spoke of college applications, classes in her senior year, her friends, her Grandma Barb whom she helped get a new phone, buying a new car. She pointed out all the pieces of jewelry she wore that belonged to Kate. Rings. Necklaces. Bracelets. I gave her the earrings I found on the New York Review of Books shop. They featured Walt Whitman quotes. One read: Resist much. The other: Obey little. Kate and I, and at his best, Jon followed these very American ideals.

    A fine and hopeful meal. So, so good to see her. Dazzle Jazz next time.

     

    An odd adjustment to the slow pace of the protein electrophoresis. As the tabs on the various tests have shown Test in Progress, I’ve come to a place of peace about it all. As I would anyway, I’m living my life. CBE Friday night for Albert’s yahrzeit. Dinner with Ruth last night. Going to Irv and Joan’s renaissance singers performance at 3 pm today. Reading. Doing the laundry. Writing. Cooking.

    In this process I rediscovered the truth of it all. Alive now and in each moment. I can only live today, right now. And, I am. So no need to be Dante: Near the end of this our mortal life (but not, I hope, too near) I have already walked in the gloomy forest and come out the other side, no longer caught there far from the straight path, the ancientrail that leads from birth to the grave.

    How first I enter’d it I scarce can say,
    Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh’d
    My senses down, when the true path I left,  Canto 1, Inferno

    Well, I can now say how first I entered it. My mother’s death pushed me down toward Dante’s inferno at too young an age, not midlife, but at seventeen, Ruth’s age as it happens. I wandered in that pit for so many years, making myself an enemy of myself, closing off the world, pushing others away. But with the help of Jung and John Desteian I found my way out. Long ago. I can still revisit the place on occasion, as I did on Friday, but I know the way out. Back to the light and to this life.

     

     


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Health Literature

  • Yikes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Alan Greenberg’s yahrzeit. Joan. A salmon colored Cumulus Cloud over Black Mountain. Dr. Gonzalez. Her nurse. The phlebotomist. My heart and aorta. Considering the body as it decompensates. Shadow Mountain as a stable and supportive presence. Ruby. All Dogs, especially Kippur and Murdoch and Leo. My Wild Neighbors. Melancholy. Dawn. Evening. Liminal times, magical times. Doorways, thresholds. Mezuzahs.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The One

    One brief shining: Opened up the test results from Quest Diagnostics and read my latest battery of tests with red fields and green, discovering that my doc has ordered a test for multiple myeloma, not completed yet, sending my anxiety titer (a Kate phrase) up, not high but noticeable, wondering if there will be more than my heart involved in this latest visit.

     

    Oh, boy. Well. I freaked myself out back in July when I got low gamma globulin results. Hadn’t processed them or heard from my doctor, went straight to multiple myeloma. Kristin said I was fine. She sees these results all the time. I calmed down. Now I discover she’s running a test battery for just that. Yikes! The results are not in yet, though my other results are.

    The possibility of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer, hit me hard because Dick Mestrich, a colleague of Kate’s at Allina, died of it after a long decline. She made him a friendship quilt which he wore often, may have been buried in it. My son and I played golf with him quite a bit when my son was in high school. I also learned recently that one of the Thursday mussar group also has it.

    The thought of a second kind of cancer to add to my already existing one? Again, yikes!

    All this is unknown right now and I’m pretty good at not getting excited before I know something for sure. Even then, I’m able to hold steady for the most part though melancholy can creep up on me. Understandable, too. Still. An uncomfortable moment for me. For sure.

     

    Just ordered two mezuzahs, one for the front door and one for the door leading to the garage. Will have Rabbi Jamie come out and hang them. There is a ritual for it. Inside each mezuzah is a scroll with the shema hand lettered by a scribe on the treated skin of a kosher animal. Not cheap. From the Jewish Museum store in New York City.

     

    At mussar yesterday afternoon another cancer survivor remarked about the love she experienced from her friends. They go to her appointments with her, help her in many ways. Nancy then mentioned Leslie who died of liver cancer two months ago saying, “Leslie had the same experience. What a wonderful way to die.” I said, “And, what a wonderful way to live. I’m experiencing that kind of love at CBE right now.” And from my longtime friends in the Ancient Brothers and my family. Knowing you are loved buoys the soul, helps it serve as the rock of your life. As long as you have it.

     

     

     


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Health Judaism