Then he began racing wildly up and down the bank, looking everywhere. ...[A]fter a while they found the canoe—but it was a mess. ... Stuart was heartbroken. ... "It's no use," he said bitterly, "it wouldn't be the same." From Stuart Little, by E. B. White
I thought I was going to learn first-hand exactly how Stuart felt. From mid-June until the 2nd of July, I labored on a very special project which, upon finishing, I wrapped and boxed and promptly shipped west to Portland. As Ben and Alise have recently moved, I sent the parcel to Alise's office by priority mail.
With the holiday last week, I nonetheless optimistically assumed she would have the box by Friday. It had not arrived by the end of Friday. Alise stayed home on Monday (so no package update) and home yesterday as well (so no package update again).
By last night (not realizing Alise had stayed home the second day), I was convinced the parcel had come undone somewhere between Ohio and Oregon. I had wrapped the project in numbered parcels; I knew parcels 1, 3, and 4 were scattered across the Great Plains. First thing this morning, I emailed Cindy, "I am making myself sick over this—if it is gone, it is gone, because it 's not like I can go out and buy another (and I don't know if I could bring myself to sew another)!"
Visions of Stuart, sobbing because his canoe had been vandalized, danced through my head all morning. That is, they danced through my head until I received the following text from Alise: The parcel is safely on my desk. Thanks april!
Come back tomorrow to read the story of the project.
Showing posts with label miracles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miracles. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Grace in Motion
Amy wasn't feeling well. She'd been sick off and on for weeks, the glands on one side of her neck were swollen, and she had almost daily severe headaches, not to mention that her inhaler (for asthma) was empty and she couldn't afford the appointment to see the doctor for a new prescription, let alone buy the inhaler afterwards.
Amy is our "almost daughter." Warren and I took her in for ten days three years ago when she fled her dad's house during an altercation, and then I tutored her several times a week for the remainder of the year - her senior year - to help her graduate on time (yes, she did). Amy, who will be 21 this spring, has been a part of our lives ever since and she will call me when life gets too overwhelming. So when she called me Monday night, half crying and worrying aloud about her medical problems, I told her she needed to get to Grace Medical Clinic at Andrews House on Wednesday evening.
A long silence ensued. "Are you going to be there?" Amy knows I work at the Andrews House Legal Clinic, so hoped I worked the medical clinic as well. When I told her no, she hemmed and hawed long enough that I said, gently, "come pick me up and I will go with you."
Grace Medical Clinic, which is held weekly, is in its third year of existence. It is entirely volunteer-driven and free to all. I have known about it since its inception, I have heard glowing descriptions of the work the volunteers do, but accompanying Amy was my first opportunity to see it in action.
What a gift.
Despite arriving some 20 minutes before the official check-in time, Amy and I walked into an already full waiting room. She was #13 on the sign-in list. The woman who held the number one slot had been waiting since 2:00.
Ages ranged from toddlers to seniors. Some were Latino; many were white. There was a family in chairs against one wall: father, mother, and three children, the oldest of whom might have been five. At another chair, a toddler played happily on the floor at his mother's feet, trying to stack nesting cups and making the bright loud sounds of a contented baby.
One patient, an older man, was explaining to another client that he was diabetic and experiencing neuropathy in his feet. "When it gets so far up the leg, they'll take my leg off," he added in a matter of fact tone. There was a couple, perhaps in their sixties, cuddled up on the couch. He had a heavily wrapped arm; she held her stomach.
The set-up crew arrived shortly after Amy and I found seats, and I watched the proceedings with fascination. It was what I always imagined watching a MASH unit set up would be. Within 20 minutes, the dining room was divided into a series of curtained examining rooms. Across the hall, others set up prayer rooms. (Grace Medical Clinic is sponsored by an area church, so offers prayer and counseling to any patients who may want it.) Although I could not see it, further down the hall, yet another team was creating an on-site pharmacy.
Amy was nervous. Amy was tense. Amy was anxious about how long it would take. Amy kept thanking me for being there with her. Amy kept talking.
The evening slowed down. Some volunteers brought in food for the patients, knowing that many of them came straight from work, or otherwise had not eaten. Apples, sloppy Joes, pretzels, bottled water - enough to take the edge off of someone's hunger. There was an announcement that the clinic was short one doctor and one nurse tonight, so they could would not see more than 15 patients that night. Little children - and there were lots of them - grew tired and cranky, then grew contented again. People talked in quiet voices. Children flowed from the waiting room to the makeshift play area (also staffed by volunteers) and then back again to their parents.
Amy got called for a weigh-in and triage. She came back with an indecipherable look on her face. When I asked about it, she replied, slowly, "She was really nice. I didn't know girls my age could treat another girl that nicely."
We waited longer. Patients were called into the examining rooms. Amy ate an apple; I ate some pretzels. We both giggled at the little girl who took a sloppy Joe, then returned it a few minutes later, all the edges nibbled off, and carefully placed it back on top of the pile of sandwiches.
Amy was finally called into the examining room. With the seat beside me empty, Peggy, one of the volunteers, sat down and we started chatting. Peggy has worked with the clinic since its inception. She lived in Columbus, and said she never thought of Delaware as needing a clinic, since the county appears to be so affluent, but how she had quickly changed her perception.
I nodded. "We hide our poverty well," I said, explaining about my involvement with our legal clinic. "And if you're from Columbus, the first thing you see coming this direction is south county, which is where most of the money and big houses are."
We compared notes on clinic operations. I admired the hot food and told Peggy how we did baked goods at our legal clinic. She said this was the first night they had hot sandwiches. Peggy talked about the setup and teardown crews and how they rotate volunteers. I talked about our bank of attorney volunteers.
The evening wore on and more patients left. Members of the teardown crew started trickling in; many of the setup and prayer volunteers, including Peggy and her husband, started leaving.
Close to 9:00, Amy finally appeared. She sat down and said, shyly, that she was going to the prayer counseling area and asked me to go with her. Once there, Amy started crying as she talked about the stress in her life, including the loss of her beloved dog. The prayers were Amy-specific: for strength as her father faces foreclosure and the roof over her head becomes uncertain, for guidance as she looks for work, for direction, for healing her grief. Amy continued to wipe away tears.
Our last stop was at the pharmacy, where she was handed a new inhaler, medication for her infection, and replacement prescriptions. Amy just glowed.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you."
Four hours after we walked in the door, we walked out. On the way to her car, Amy reflected on what she had experienced that night. "I thought they would be rude or make me feel bad for being poor. But they were all so wonderful and caring."
She was quiet for a moment. "I cried in the examining room too," she said. "I never cry. But the nurse who saw me first was so nice and saw me as a person."
For many, a trip to Grace Medical Clinic is a life saving experience. For Amy, it might be a life changing experience. When you grow up in what can at best be called "hard circumstances," and where you are now living life at an even lower level because of the Great Recession, you learn early and quickly that life is hard and people often look right through you because of your poverty. Amy is losing the roof over her head. Her future is so uncertain right now. So she came to Grace Medical Clinic with all her defenses and walls in place, expecting to be treated poorly at worst and brusquely at best. Amy walked out saying "they were so nice, they really cared." She was stunned that the Grace Clinic volunteers treated someone "like her" - someone in need of a helping hand - with dignity and kindness.
The Grace Medical Clinic is a gift in the midst of our community. The volunteers, medical and lay people alike, are passionate about this mission. Their faith shines through in their actions, their smiles, and their gentleness. They are the embodiment of Kahlil Gibran's saying that "work is love made visible."
Our communities are full of patients, clients, customers, and others who gather the courage to step through a door and ask for help. They are the Amys of the world, not sure what reception they will receive when they ask. I am always in awe of the volunteers who open those doors and serve - those who dispense prayers or medications, those who give legal advice, those who cook and serve meals, those who put their beliefs into action - and count myself blessed beyond words to have the chance to work alongside them. They are ordinary people who have stepped forward in extraordinary ways. They are ordinary people who have looked around, said "this (lack of medical care, lack of legal help, hunger, homelessness) is wrong," and then taken action.
Wednesday night I got to witness a miracle firsthand. I saw Grace in motion.
*Photo courtesy of Andrews House, Delaware, Ohio.
Amy is our "almost daughter." Warren and I took her in for ten days three years ago when she fled her dad's house during an altercation, and then I tutored her several times a week for the remainder of the year - her senior year - to help her graduate on time (yes, she did). Amy, who will be 21 this spring, has been a part of our lives ever since and she will call me when life gets too overwhelming. So when she called me Monday night, half crying and worrying aloud about her medical problems, I told her she needed to get to Grace Medical Clinic at Andrews House on Wednesday evening.
A long silence ensued. "Are you going to be there?" Amy knows I work at the Andrews House Legal Clinic, so hoped I worked the medical clinic as well. When I told her no, she hemmed and hawed long enough that I said, gently, "come pick me up and I will go with you."
Grace Medical Clinic, which is held weekly, is in its third year of existence. It is entirely volunteer-driven and free to all. I have known about it since its inception, I have heard glowing descriptions of the work the volunteers do, but accompanying Amy was my first opportunity to see it in action.
What a gift.
Despite arriving some 20 minutes before the official check-in time, Amy and I walked into an already full waiting room. She was #13 on the sign-in list. The woman who held the number one slot had been waiting since 2:00.
Ages ranged from toddlers to seniors. Some were Latino; many were white. There was a family in chairs against one wall: father, mother, and three children, the oldest of whom might have been five. At another chair, a toddler played happily on the floor at his mother's feet, trying to stack nesting cups and making the bright loud sounds of a contented baby.
One patient, an older man, was explaining to another client that he was diabetic and experiencing neuropathy in his feet. "When it gets so far up the leg, they'll take my leg off," he added in a matter of fact tone. There was a couple, perhaps in their sixties, cuddled up on the couch. He had a heavily wrapped arm; she held her stomach.
The set-up crew arrived shortly after Amy and I found seats, and I watched the proceedings with fascination. It was what I always imagined watching a MASH unit set up would be. Within 20 minutes, the dining room was divided into a series of curtained examining rooms. Across the hall, others set up prayer rooms. (Grace Medical Clinic is sponsored by an area church, so offers prayer and counseling to any patients who may want it.) Although I could not see it, further down the hall, yet another team was creating an on-site pharmacy.
Amy was nervous. Amy was tense. Amy was anxious about how long it would take. Amy kept thanking me for being there with her. Amy kept talking.
The evening slowed down. Some volunteers brought in food for the patients, knowing that many of them came straight from work, or otherwise had not eaten. Apples, sloppy Joes, pretzels, bottled water - enough to take the edge off of someone's hunger. There was an announcement that the clinic was short one doctor and one nurse tonight, so they could would not see more than 15 patients that night. Little children - and there were lots of them - grew tired and cranky, then grew contented again. People talked in quiet voices. Children flowed from the waiting room to the makeshift play area (also staffed by volunteers) and then back again to their parents.
Amy got called for a weigh-in and triage. She came back with an indecipherable look on her face. When I asked about it, she replied, slowly, "She was really nice. I didn't know girls my age could treat another girl that nicely."
We waited longer. Patients were called into the examining rooms. Amy ate an apple; I ate some pretzels. We both giggled at the little girl who took a sloppy Joe, then returned it a few minutes later, all the edges nibbled off, and carefully placed it back on top of the pile of sandwiches.
Amy was finally called into the examining room. With the seat beside me empty, Peggy, one of the volunteers, sat down and we started chatting. Peggy has worked with the clinic since its inception. She lived in Columbus, and said she never thought of Delaware as needing a clinic, since the county appears to be so affluent, but how she had quickly changed her perception.
I nodded. "We hide our poverty well," I said, explaining about my involvement with our legal clinic. "And if you're from Columbus, the first thing you see coming this direction is south county, which is where most of the money and big houses are."
We compared notes on clinic operations. I admired the hot food and told Peggy how we did baked goods at our legal clinic. She said this was the first night they had hot sandwiches. Peggy talked about the setup and teardown crews and how they rotate volunteers. I talked about our bank of attorney volunteers.
The evening wore on and more patients left. Members of the teardown crew started trickling in; many of the setup and prayer volunteers, including Peggy and her husband, started leaving.
Close to 9:00, Amy finally appeared. She sat down and said, shyly, that she was going to the prayer counseling area and asked me to go with her. Once there, Amy started crying as she talked about the stress in her life, including the loss of her beloved dog. The prayers were Amy-specific: for strength as her father faces foreclosure and the roof over her head becomes uncertain, for guidance as she looks for work, for direction, for healing her grief. Amy continued to wipe away tears.
Our last stop was at the pharmacy, where she was handed a new inhaler, medication for her infection, and replacement prescriptions. Amy just glowed.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you."
Four hours after we walked in the door, we walked out. On the way to her car, Amy reflected on what she had experienced that night. "I thought they would be rude or make me feel bad for being poor. But they were all so wonderful and caring."
She was quiet for a moment. "I cried in the examining room too," she said. "I never cry. But the nurse who saw me first was so nice and saw me as a person."
For many, a trip to Grace Medical Clinic is a life saving experience. For Amy, it might be a life changing experience. When you grow up in what can at best be called "hard circumstances," and where you are now living life at an even lower level because of the Great Recession, you learn early and quickly that life is hard and people often look right through you because of your poverty. Amy is losing the roof over her head. Her future is so uncertain right now. So she came to Grace Medical Clinic with all her defenses and walls in place, expecting to be treated poorly at worst and brusquely at best. Amy walked out saying "they were so nice, they really cared." She was stunned that the Grace Clinic volunteers treated someone "like her" - someone in need of a helping hand - with dignity and kindness.
The Grace Medical Clinic is a gift in the midst of our community. The volunteers, medical and lay people alike, are passionate about this mission. Their faith shines through in their actions, their smiles, and their gentleness. They are the embodiment of Kahlil Gibran's saying that "work is love made visible."
Our communities are full of patients, clients, customers, and others who gather the courage to step through a door and ask for help. They are the Amys of the world, not sure what reception they will receive when they ask. I am always in awe of the volunteers who open those doors and serve - those who dispense prayers or medications, those who give legal advice, those who cook and serve meals, those who put their beliefs into action - and count myself blessed beyond words to have the chance to work alongside them. They are ordinary people who have stepped forward in extraordinary ways. They are ordinary people who have looked around, said "this (lack of medical care, lack of legal help, hunger, homelessness) is wrong," and then taken action.
Wednesday night I got to witness a miracle firsthand. I saw Grace in motion.
*Photo courtesy of Andrews House, Delaware, Ohio.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Every Day is a Good Day: September 2010
These are the days of miracle and wonder…
"The Boy in the Bubble," Paul Simon
Fall is here. (Note: well, it was when I wrote this out in longhand two days ago. The temps have turned hot again and we may set a heat record tomorrow. But the spirit of the season has moved into my life and I know the cool days will return soon.)
The nights are cool now and crickets dominate the air waves.
The fair is in town for the week.
The canning is done for the year.
The finches have picked over the rudbeckia, now sere and brown. The ornamental cherry and the dogwood are loaded with fruit.
When I go walking, the first leaves of fall crunch underfoot.
Monday night we had homemade soup with fresh cornbread (also from scratch), a salad for Warren, and some of the last of the garden tomatoes for me. It was the first bean soup of the fall.
This is my favorite season. In the fall, I gather up small moments in great bunches.
Every day is a good day.
Especially if it starts like this:
And ends like this:
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Weekend Wrap Up
I had planned on writing about our Farmers Market, but I am too tired to do so.
Monday I was exhausted. Way past the limp dishrag stage. (What's more tired than a limp dishrag? I don't know, but that is what I was.) Tuesday was better but I was still drained enough that a colleague at court said "You're still worn out from this weekend, aren't you?" (He was too polite to add "because you look really awful.")
So here it is Wednesday morning and the needle is finally coming up off the E.
I knew going into last weekend that it would be a full one. Our symphony was playing a free holiday concert on the 4th, then turning around and heading to Lake Erie the next day to play the same concert at Put-In Bay, which is a 30 minute ferry ride from the Ohio shore.
Being married to the Symphony as I am, I double as a roadie. A double concert weekend is roadie hell. And that was before the rain issue came up Saturday evening.
This year was the Symphony's 24th July 4th concert. It has always been held outdoors, somehow managing to take place between storms when they have come up. Sometimes there are afternoon showers and volunteers start toweling off seats at 6:30 p.m. More often than not, there is no rain and no concern.
This year all the radars showed a solid wall of green bearing straight down on us. There was no rain per se, just a lot of sprinkling off and on. So we set up outside as we always have, eyeing the sky throughout the day.
As Executive Director, Warren makes the final call as to whether to move inside. He held off. The crowds started arriving. It was sprinkling.
Then it started sprinkling harder.
Strings players will not play in sprinkles. They all clustered inside like chicks in an incubator. Warren kept the percussion equipment inside as well. Knots of people - Warren, the production manager, some trustees, me - formed to talk.
Moving the concert inside posed a host of logistical issues, the least of which was resetting the stage. The need for a cover for the outdoor stage came up more than once. Then one trustee said "could we get enough pop-up canopies to cover the musicians?"
His words electrified us. The fire chief volunteered one immediately and called the station for two more. The symphony had one in the office one block away. A church group in the audience had a very large one that they agreed to bring to the stage.
Suddenly the outside concert was a go. What happened next resembled films you see of military units scrambling on alert: we were running from tent to tent, some of us popping them up while others hustled chairs, mics, and stands out of the way. (Thank you, Pete O'Flaherty, for jumping in to help to raise the roofs.) One up, another up. A third up. The sixth and final tent was 8 miles north of town and would be en route as soon as it came down. A couple of us waited on a side street to race it to the concert site as soon as it arrived.
The concert went on, about 20 minutes late, but it went on with the musicians under the tents and the crowd under the skies (which never did open up). Afterwards, as we broke down the stage and packed for the next morning's trip, we all congratulated ourselves for Making It Work.
All the same, it was a late, late night before everything was done and we were home.
The next day dawned clear and early. Too early. Warren and the production manager, Dick, were on the road by 9:00 with the truck full of stands and percussion. At 10:30, I went to our high school to meet the bus and help check in musicians. There was mass confusion about who was hauling the basses to the lake. A horn player had not shown up (she wasn't riding the bus, it turns out). Good thing those took some extra time to sort out because at 11:00, when we supposed to depart, our teenage vocalist came flying off the bus exclaiming "Reuben is on his way! He just left his house!"
(I have known Reuben since he was in middle school, so I had no qualms saying to him "we almost left without you…and I will never let you live this down." The only thing I didn't say was "just wait until I tell your mother.")
The trip continued to be full of small snags and disruptions. There was confusion at the ferry landing: the employee checking us in wanted one set of numbers, the employee running the tickets wanted another. We finally settled on counting the yellow Symphony passes going over, but agreeing that every musician would have a ferry ticket (now all in my possession) coming back. The van with the basses had not yet arrived and would have to take a later ferry. That caused great consternation among the bass players.
By the time we arrived at the concert site, I was tired (no surprise), hungry (breakfast had been hours ago), hot (it was sunny and very warm), and frazzled (courtesy of the bass issues, the ferry ticket snags, the heat, and the hunger). In short, I was on overload.
I was not awful to be around, but I wasn't very nice either. I wanted to be left alone, alone, alone.
Poor Warren.
But the quiet passing of time helped. Sitting in the shade on the porch of the visitors center with a cool lake breeze helped. Knowing we had managed to shepherd the musicians to the island, despite the snafus, helped, especially when the basses arrived on the next ferry. Knowing a box supper would be arriving shortly helped. Missing Warren, who had wisely moved to the porch on the other side to give me some space, helped.
Pretty soon I had recovered enough to ask him if the offer to go up the tower at Perry's Monument, which he had so happily made when I first arrived and was not fit to be around, still stood.
Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial is part of the National Park Service and commemorates both the key naval victory of the War of 1812 ("Don't give up the ship!") which took place in the waters just off the island and the long-lasting peace between Britain, Canada and America. It is only five miles from the Canadian/American border, the longest undefended
border in the world. The monument, in the form of a Doric column, is 47 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. You take an elevator to the upper deck platform, which is 2 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty's torch.
The upper deck platform is a great place to view the world and recover your spirits, especially if you are me and Warren is anywhere nearby. By the time we came back down, I was grounded in more ways than just physically.
The concert at Put-in Bay was stellar. Perhaps it was the setting, perhaps it was the local islanders in attendance, perhaps it was one of those times when the audience and the orchestra are in perfect synchronicity. The emotional highlight was when our vocalist Dominique sang "God Bless America." Audience members began rising to their feet to stand
All the same, it was a late, late night before everything was done and we were home.
The next day dawned clear and early. Too early. Warren and the production manager, Dick, were on the road by 9:00 with the truck full of stands and percussion. At 10:30, I went to our high school to meet the bus and help check in musicians. There was mass confusion about who was hauling the basses to the lake. A horn player had not shown up (she wasn't riding the bus, it turns out). Good thing those took some extra time to sort out because at 11:00, when we supposed to depart, our teenage vocalist came flying off the bus exclaiming "Reuben is on his way! He just left his house!"
(I have known Reuben since he was in middle school, so I had no qualms saying to him "we almost left without you…and I will never let you live this down." The only thing I didn't say was "just wait until I tell your mother.")
The trip continued to be full of small snags and disruptions. There was confusion at the ferry landing: the employee checking us in wanted one set of numbers, the employee running the tickets wanted another. We finally settled on counting the yellow Symphony passes going over, but agreeing that every musician would have a ferry ticket (now all in my possession) coming back. The van with the basses had not yet arrived and would have to take a later ferry. That caused great consternation among the bass players.
By the time we arrived at the concert site, I was tired (no surprise), hungry (breakfast had been hours ago), hot (it was sunny and very warm), and frazzled (courtesy of the bass issues, the ferry ticket snags, the heat, and the hunger). In short, I was on overload.
I was not awful to be around, but I wasn't very nice either. I wanted to be left alone, alone, alone.
Poor Warren.
But the quiet passing of time helped. Sitting in the shade on the porch of the visitors center with a cool lake breeze helped. Knowing we had managed to shepherd the musicians to the island, despite the snafus, helped, especially when the basses arrived on the next ferry. Knowing a box supper would be arriving shortly helped. Missing Warren, who had wisely moved to the porch on the other side to give me some space, helped.
Pretty soon I had recovered enough to ask him if the offer to go up the tower at Perry's Monument, which he had so happily made when I first arrived and was not fit to be around, still stood.
Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial is part of the National Park Service and commemorates both the key naval victory of the War of 1812 ("Don't give up the ship!") which took place in the waters just off the island and the long-lasting peace between Britain, Canada and America. It is only five miles from the Canadian/American border, the longest undefended
border in the world. The monument, in the form of a Doric column, is 47 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. You take an elevator to the upper deck platform, which is 2 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty's torch. The upper deck platform is a great place to view the world and recover your spirits, especially if you are me and Warren is anywhere nearby. By the time we came back down, I was grounded in more ways than just physically.
The concert at Put-in Bay was stellar. Perhaps it was the setting, perhaps it was the local islanders in attendance, perhaps it was one of those times when the audience and the orchestra are in perfect synchronicity. The emotional highlight was when our vocalist Dominique sang "God Bless America." Audience members began rising to their feet to stand
silently while she sang, whether out of respect for the song or her voice or both. By the time she finished, many of us were in tears as we applauded and called out our admiration.
After the last note of "Stars and Stripes Forever" died away, it was time to reverse our morning route. We struck the set, loaded the equipment, headed to the ferry, waited for the ferry, boarded the bus, and rode home. The basses beat us back this time. By the time we got to bed, it was already Monday.
And now it is Wednesday. I cancelled appointments Monday, knowing I was too tired to think straight. Tuesday I had the meeting I had moved from Monday, and that was when my colleague politely inquired about my well being.
And I am still tired today.
But you know what? It was worth it. It was worth every moment, even the frazzled, frustrating ones. It was worth it to see the smiles of the musicians reflected in the smiles of their audiences, it was worth it to see Dominique (newly gradated from high school) woo not one but two audiences, it was worth it to rush to set up tents so the show could go on, and it was worth it to once again watch my husband at his best as he solved various production problems and then took his place in the percussion section as if there was nothing else in the world but the notes on the page.
For me, who has not lived in the orchestral world until recently, music is a miracle. Out of the confusion - misplaced parts, broken strings, sore hands, wrong notes - comes the sublime. Each concert is the musicians' collective attempt to make the world new again with music. Sunday night, our musicians did just that.
By the time our ferry left Put-In Bay that evening, the sun was setting. I stood on the deck watching the reds and purples wash across the horizon. The family in front of me held their young daughter up to see the colors. She laughed and clapped her hands, smiling into her parents' faces, reaching towards the sky, reaching towards the miracle.
After the last note of "Stars and Stripes Forever" died away, it was time to reverse our morning route. We struck the set, loaded the equipment, headed to the ferry, waited for the ferry, boarded the bus, and rode home. The basses beat us back this time. By the time we got to bed, it was already Monday.
And now it is Wednesday. I cancelled appointments Monday, knowing I was too tired to think straight. Tuesday I had the meeting I had moved from Monday, and that was when my colleague politely inquired about my well being.
And I am still tired today.
But you know what? It was worth it. It was worth every moment, even the frazzled, frustrating ones. It was worth it to see the smiles of the musicians reflected in the smiles of their audiences, it was worth it to see Dominique (newly gradated from high school) woo not one but two audiences, it was worth it to rush to set up tents so the show could go on, and it was worth it to once again watch my husband at his best as he solved various production problems and then took his place in the percussion section as if there was nothing else in the world but the notes on the page.
For me, who has not lived in the orchestral world until recently, music is a miracle. Out of the confusion - misplaced parts, broken strings, sore hands, wrong notes - comes the sublime. Each concert is the musicians' collective attempt to make the world new again with music. Sunday night, our musicians did just that.
By the time our ferry left Put-In Bay that evening, the sun was setting. I stood on the deck watching the reds and purples wash across the horizon. The family in front of me held their young daughter up to see the colors. She laughed and clapped her hands, smiling into her parents' faces, reaching towards the sky, reaching towards the miracle.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Resurrections
As has been the case for the last several years, my husband Warren was hired to play timpani for Easter church services at a Clintonville area Methodist church, Maple Grove. I went along as I try to go along to all of his performances.
I was raised Lutheran, although I veered away from the Lutheran church and formal religious observances early on in college. After some sampling here and there, including converting to and practicing Judaism for a number of years, I drifted back towards a belief system somewhere between Unitarianism and non-defined Christianity. I now consider myself spiritual, not religious, which I acknowledge is waffling of the first degree. All the same, eighteen years of Lutheran liturgy are engrained deeply and I can follow the Methodist liturgy with ease and am still able to quote the Apostles Creed from memory.
The minister at Maple Grove, Bill Croy, is a bright, funny, and thoughtful man of the cloth. I seem none the worse for wear for my annual exposure to his sermons. This year was no exception and the fact that I am now writing about it tells me it was more meaningful than usual.
His theme this year was "The Rest of the Story," and related to the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark, where the women who discovered the empty tomb left troubled and afraid. Reverend Croy was interested in, as his title indicated, "the rest of the story." What changed their minds from troubled to joyous? What sparked them and the others into affirming the miracle of the empty tomb?
Croy spoke about resurrections-not just this one, but the small, everyday resurrections that mark people's lives. Any occasion where "new life [is] apparent in the midst of dead reality" is reason enough to celebrate, from the biblical resurrection to the rebirth of hope in the midst of despair.
The sermon has continued to linger in my mind and tug at my thoughts, even though this is now Tuesday afternoon, my 2008 tax picture is not good, and we are in the middle of a double concert week that will take a lot of time and energy from us both.
The pull for me is the topic of resurrections. So when Bill Croy started talking this past Sunday, something more than my ears pricked up.
In 2005, I underwent not one but two stem cell transplants in 90 days as part of my treatment for myeloma (bone marrow cancer). This unusual procedure was to study the possible benefits of tandem transplants. (Researchers have since concluded there are no benefits and so tandem transplants are no longer performed.)
Stem cell transplants are medical wonders, from start to finish. The basic procedure requires destroying the patient's bone marrow with one dose of really strong chemo, and then infusing the stem cells (harvested a few weeks earlier from the patient) intravenously 24 hours later. If all goes well, the stem cells act like seeds in a garden and grow into new bone marrow some ten to fourteen days after the infusion.
When undergoing a transplant, you watch yourself die on paper. It is a startling experience, and one I lived through twice that summer. Every morning, someone would come into my hospital room and post my latest blood work on a wall chart. The white blood count started downward, slowly at first, then faster. At day six or seven after each of my transplants, my white blood count was at zero. My old bone marrow was dead and the stem cells infused into me had not yet matured. Nor did we know yet if they would.
On paper, I was dead. Off paper, if the transplant did not take, I could be kept alive only with blood transfusions until an emergency marrow donor, if one existed, could be found. For those several days between zero and the upward nudge, I found my thoughts all over the place, always coming back to "what if?"
I was fortunate. Each time, my white blood count slowly rose, as marked daily on my wall charts. Stem cells turned into bone marrow and I came back from the dead.
It was my own personal, one-woman resurrection. And having experienced it twice, I am changed forever.
Cancer is something I live with permanently. I am not glad I got cancer; I would rather have passed this opportunity up. But given that it is now a permanent part of me, like my blue eyes, I squeeze it for every positive drop I can. I am grateful not for the disease but for what it has revealed to me: the incredible joys of life, the gifts of family and community, and, during one long and uncertain summer, the miracle of a resurrection.
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