Ben's Birthday

My son Ben is (gulp) 24 years old today.

24? How did he get to be 24? Wasn't he just 16 last week? Or 7?

Didn't I bring him home from the hospital just the other day?

A kaleidoscope of images dance in my head. Ben laughing the first time, learning to walk, learning to swim, learning to read, starting school, discovering music. Destination Imagination, marching band, In the Know. Books everywhere. I remember his coming back from a weekend visit to Reed and announcing he had found the college he wanted to attend; I remember him joyfully showing me the email announcement when he was accepted.

Ben headed to college in 2004 and, after the summer of 2005, never returned to my home again except as a visitor. He set up his own apartment and life elsewhere. He's been way far away all of that time. Until a few weeks ago, he lived in Portland, Oregon. He and Alise, my almost daughter-in-law, recently moved to Helena, Montana (her hometown), which brought him 700 miles closer to my front door, but it's still a long ways from here to there.

When Ben arrived at college, he was instantly home in ways he could not be elsewhere. He found acceptance and friendship and respect and Alise, all at the same place. From afar, I got to watch him assemble his life with the concentration he once brought to his building blocks. And while all the blocks aren't in place yet, I stand back and look at his life with the same amazement that I had when he was four.

The bond that Ben and I have shared from his birth forward is books. I read to Ben before he was two days old. His first night home from the hospital, I propped him in my arms, opened Are You My Mother, and began.

"A mother bird sat on her egg."

Every night of that first year - through colic, through croup, through teething - I read. Almost every night after that for the next 14 years, I read. I loved books and this child of mine also loved books. Once he learned to read, Ben took off on his own literary adventures, but we continued to share an hour at bedtime most nights, my reading aloud to him or sometimes the two of us taking turns. Then someone interfered and demanded that it stop. That broke off our time together reading, but it never broke that bond.

Books and more books. When Ben was in 4th grade, he had two desks, side by side. One was for him, the other was for his books. When he went off to college, he had to leave his books behind, but quickly began acquiring more books. When Warren and I moved into this house, I boxed up Ben's books and put them in the attic. There are nine or ten boxes up there. Maybe more. (And I didn't even box the children's books.) After Ben and Alise moved to Montana, Alise emailed me about the move being seamless, "only a little stressful trying to fit all of our beloved books into the small space in the car." I can only imagine.

I don't know what the future holds for Ben. I am quite sure it will continue to hold books. Like Thomas Jefferson, Ben cannot live without them. I hope and trust it will continue to hold Alise - funny, bright, engaging, loving, caring, theatrical, passionate, book-devouring Alise, who has brought joy and light to Ben's life.

Whatever it holds for you, Ben, know that I am there too, championing you.

I look back at all the books that flowed through our hands, from Redwall to Mordor, from dinosaurs to Feynman, from Seuss to Sutcliff. Whether we were down the rabbit hole with Alice or on the road with Stuart Little, Ben and I journeyed together, sharing a love of the story, a love of the books, a love of one another.

Happy 24th, Ben.

December Oncology Report

Hope.

Such a fragile word. Such a powerful word.

I saw my oncologist today. My oncologist, the wonderful and skilled and thoughtful Timothy Moore, and not his colleague, Dr. Bully.

My appointment was for 10:30, and all morning before leaving, I paced and rehashed (briefly, briefly) the disastrous July appointment. I was in tears from time to time and wondered if I could keep my voice from breaking at my appointment.

By the time Warren picked me up, I was tense and edgy. Thinking I was masking it well, I immediately said, "I'm not happy. I'm tense and edgy."

Warren did not roll his eyes, which he would have been more than entitled to do. Instead, he squeezed my hand and said "I know."

On the hospital elevator to fourth floor, I felt the tears coming dangerously close to the surface. "I'm nervous. I'm scared." "I know you are, it's okay." "I'm scared Dr. Bully is going to show up."

As I checked in, just short of hyperventilating by then, Warren pointed to a large sign that said "Dr. Moore." Okay, so my doc was in. Whew. Then as we sat in the waiting area, I heard Tim's voice down the hallway.

Warren nudged me. "That sounds like Tim."

I nodded. My breathing started to return to normal.

I don't think I quite believed I was seeing my doctor until he blew through the door of the examining room with his trademark grin and hearty handshake. We briefly discussed what happened in July. Tim offered neither excuses nor apologies for his colleague's bad behavior, but said, firmly, "you will only see me from now on."

And then we moved on to my myeloma. My myeloma, which has gone unexamined and without thoughtful review for months now. My myeloma, which I have now known and lived with intimately for five years and one month. (But who's counting?)

Last week I had a kappa free light chain assay - the new gold standard for monitoring myeloma - done for the first time.

And the results?

I am still floating in Cancerland. My numbers show the same low-level myeloma activity that has gone on for the last three years. Because this was my first light chain done, I had no baseline for self-comparison, but Tim pointed to one number and said "see that 5? It should be below 2 in a person with no myeloma. My patients with full-blown myeloma? That number is in the hundreds."

Floating, floating, floating. My spirits started to soar.

Tim and I talked about myeloma treatments (none of which I need yet), about my swimming and walking, about my energy levels, about our respective children. We talked about my lack of medical insurance, about this country's failure to solve the healthcare issue, about my potential lack of options (because of cost) should my myeloma reactivate. We talked about all the amazing treatments today that did not exist five years ago when Tim and I first met. He decided which lab tests in which sequences he would order so as not to bankrupt me, then said "I'll see you in March. Have a great holidays, you two!," flashed his grin, and was gone.

The weight of the stress I had been carrying since July was off my shoulders. I all but danced out the room with Warren trailing behind. My cancer is still floating! It's there, we all know it's there, but it is behaving itself! The KGB hasn't moved in yet!

When I got home, I had a voicemail from my friend Doug, who is in the middle of a battle with stomach cancer that makes my experiences look like a cakewalk. I caught him by phone before he left his office, and we caught up, first on work, and then on cancer. Doug is going through increasingly stronger chemotherapy, with the goal being surgery in January. Despite the nausea, the energy loss, the uncertainty, Doug's first words were "I am so blessed." Blessed because he appears to be responding to treatment, blessed because his family and friends and colleagues are all standing shoulder to shoulder to help him through this trial, blessed because he is still alive. I shared with Doug my own Cancerland news and could feel his genuine joy through the phone lines.

Talking with Doug was the unexpected icing on the already substantial cake I'd been given earlier this morning.

I then emailed my friend Cindy the news and she responded gleefully. She thought maybe now I could feel some Christmas spirit.

Maybe I will. We'll see.

I do know what I feel right now though. Grateful. Blessed.

And full of hope.

The Book Bunch

Tomorrow is my son Ben's birthday and I am finishing the post for his birthday. It is also the birthday of my friends Ada, Margo, and Scott.

These four birthday celebrants are among the most avid readers I know. I have some other friends who are also Big Readers, but these four take the cake. All but Ben live here in Delaware and the two most common sentences I exchange with them are "so what are you reading?" and "have you read [fill in the blank]?"

Is that merely coincidence?

There is a Talmudic passage that states that every unborn baby has a lit candle by its head so that it can see both into the past and into the future. The unborn baby is all-knowing. At birth, an angel taps it on the lips and the baby forgets everything it learned in the womb, so that it may enter the world in innocence and purity.

When I look at the December 16th bunch, I wonder whether that same angel nonetheless gave them each a little nudge and whispered "try reading."

Happy birthday, my bookish friends!

The Clementine

Sunday morning was gray and cold. We were loading the timpani in the rain, in the dark, as Warren had an early morning rehearsal for a church service he was playing. I started laughing as we grew soggy; life really is never, ever dull around Warren.

We were both quiet on the 30 minute drive to Columbus. Warren admitted he was thinking of music - of the service that morning, of the Symphony's holiday concerts that afternoon. My mind was on…everything. Sam, work, baking, the legal clinic this Tuesday, the medical bills still lingering from Dr. Bully running roughshod over my medical care and my budget last July, this Tuesday's appointment at long last with my oncologist, Ben's birthday midweek, Montana, our not having any Christmas decorations out let alone up, the concerts later that day.

Everything.

The church Warren was playing at was Maple Grove Methodist, where he always plays for the Easter services. I have written about Maple Grove before. I like the minister there. I like the feel of the church. It is very oriented to service - not just within its congregation but also within its community.

I like that. I always come away from a Maple Grover church service feeling cared for and uplifted.

Yesterday was no exception. A line in one of the offered prayers caught my ear: "Help us remember you do not ask us to heal everything, but rather simply find a way in which we may lighten someone's burden."

I liked that line. I wrote it down on a Mini-Methodist Doodle Pad with a pencil, both of which I borrowed from the children's corner.

Reverend Croy's sermon that morning was on living the repentant life. He spoke about John the Baptist's message to early followers. "Share. That's what he first told them to do. If you have, give. The repentant life is as simple as sharing a coat or a meal."

I carried those words out of church and back to Delaware and through two holiday concerts (really wonderful, excellent, superb holiday concerts) and through two more hours of breaking down the stage and hauling instruments back to our house. I thought about them this morning as I started my day.

They were still on my mind when, walking back home after my Monday morning walk with my friend Patricia, I heard someone shout my name. It was Ruth, who is Cora's mother, Cora being a friend of Ben's for the last 16 years and a young woman whom I have had the extreme pleasure and honor to know and watch grow up over those years.

I have known Ruth for 16 years as well and always enjoy talking with her, even though our lives don't often intersect. Today we talked (me standing in the street, Ruth with her car window rolled down) for 15 minutes about Cora, about Ben, about ourselves, about Life. We laughed, we sighed, we shared ourselves.

Reaching for a notepad to write the title of this blog down, Ruth pulled a small orange sphere out of her purse instead. "Here," she said, handing it to me through her car window as she continued to scrabble for the notepad, "have a clementine." We were talking about sharing, about how so many women write blogs because we like to share.

Ruth sharing her fruit was automatic and effortless. I laughed and told her I would blog about the clementine.

We went our separate ways and I walked the remaining two blocks to the house. I thought back to the sermon yesterday.

Share. If you have, give.

Ruth did that for me this morning. She shared, she gave. Not just a clementine, but her thoughts, her friendship, her warmth.

I came away uplifted.

Losing the Lip

Somewhere, in some short story I read in some age long past, there was a colloquy between a little girl and the household cook in which the cook, commenting on the girl's pronounced pout, said something about her lip being stuck out so far that someone (get the idea I can't quite pull the quote out of the garbage bin in my mind?) could hitch a ride on it.

In my mind, if not in person, my lip feels that far stuck out. Someone, or something, could hitch a ride on it.

Oh, I'm not in a bad mood. Not at all.

I'm just in one of those I-can't-turn-around-without-stepping-on-myself moods that hit from time to time. I spent much of yesterday baking. A chunk of today will be spent that way as well. I enjoy baking, but I am about "baked out."

Last night was spent with Symphony board and volunteers decorating Gray Chapel for the holiday concerts. I drew the "program stuffing" detail, which meant first refolding almost 1000 inserts "right side out" and then stuffing it and two other pieces into 1000 programs for tomorrow's two concerts. There were five of us on this task, one a professor of ornithology who told us stories about all the places he has been - all over the world, including Antarctica - and the things he has done in pursuit of his subjects in such a droll way that I laughed my way through the folding and stuffing. Still, it was A LOT of folding and stuffing. Following on the heels of my baking all day, it finished off my energy and my hands, putting the final chapped layer on top of skin already battered from a day spent drenched either in or hot soapy water as I washed dishes.

If I rub my fingers together, there is the faint sound of very fine sandpaper.

And the Christmas cactus, which has not had a good year, just dropped the lone bud it managed to produce.

Sharon at Musings of a Midlife Mom recently posted about having no Christmas spirit yet. I commented "I am having trouble finding my own "Christmas spirit" this year - so much so that I keep trying to write a blog post about it and can't even get that out! I don't know if I feel like saying "Bah Humbug!" - mine is more the "let me sit quietly over here and not think about it."

I still feel that way. I am not in the Bah Humbug camp and hope I never am. If I were ever a character in A Christmas Carol (one of my favorite books), I might echo Scrooge's nephew Fred, who defends Christmas to his uncle in an oratory burst that ends with these stirring words: "And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

But the Christmas spirit per se? It hasn't kicked in yet, despite the radio being turned to the station that plays Christmas songs continually and despite the greeting cards that are starting to appear in our mailbox and despite the smells of baking that permeate this house.

But I don't think I am pouting about my lack of Christmas spirit. Oh, it will come, but it might be a little later and a lot more pensive this year. That is not what is making me pout.

No, I am pouting because in a (I hope rare) fit of self-indulgence, I am feeling put out, put upon, put to work, and put to the test, all in one breath! I am worrying too much and counting my blessings too little. I am dwelling on the small moments of irritation and not the small moments of great reward. I am thinking too much of all the things as of yet undone, and not enough of what truly is meaningful and necessary to turn my hand to and complete.

In the movie "White Christmas," Bing sings "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep" to Rosemary Clooney. It is an annoyingly cloying song, but the point is well made. Only my version would be "Count Your Blessings Instead of All Your Annoyances," which would be not at all alliterative and difficult to rhyme to boot.

It is early morning here. The sun is bright despite the thermometer reading of 17. Warren headed out to Gray Chapel just after sunrise to set up the percussion section and do last minute office work before rehearsal. He just now zoomed in and back out again to grab a conga drum. (Life is never, ever dull around here.) I have butter coming to room temperature on the counter and a bag of sliced apples and one of grated zucchini thawing in the sink. I told Warren I would come over to rehearsal later this morning and take some pictures for him, so need to gear up for that shortly.

I plan on walking, knowing that the brisk, cold hike will do me good. I am counting on it to give me time to lose the lip, shake off my mood, and turn my heart to the gifts of the day and maybe, just maybe, the gifts of the season.

The Tree Cutter

"We're really hurting for work."

The speaker was a young man, maybe all of thirty, but maybe younger than that. He was part of a small crew taking down a tree next door. He saw me watching the operation from the back patio door and a minute or two later was at our front door, offering to make an estimate on some tree work in our own yard. In his opinion, the pine in the front needed elevated; a couple of small trees in the back should come down.

He looked at me and said "if you let us do any of it right now today while we're here, I'll give you an even better price."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that the likelihood of our hiring him or anyone else to take down the trees was slim at best. Warren does a lot of that work himself and our dollars are pretty much earmarked for other projects. I let him do the estimate and then stood outside in the cold while he did so out of sympathy for someone looking so young and so worn down.

His name was Daren and he talked his way through the estimate as he wrote it out. He had enough of a hills accent in his speech to be noticeable, so I surmised he may have grown up in southeastern Ohio.

Daren's hands were calloused and work-hardened, but his handwriting was tiny and delicate. The only place where his dialect slipped into his writing was when he wrote that the price was negotiable "a lil bit."

Daren talked about the company while he estimated the job. They had come over from Springfield, about an hour from here. They weren't getting much work in that area, so they were taking jobs farther away.

Daren said that he had a bigger truck with a chipper attachment, but that a flywheel had gone out and it would cost $1600 to fix. "I don't have that kind of money right now," he said, explaining why instead the crew was driving a pickup truck with a small trailer for hauling. He said by the time they paid for gas and for a dump to take the debris, they barely broke even on most jobs.

I told him about a local company that will take yard waste at no charge because after composting and mulching it, they sell the results back to landscapers and gardeners in the community. I volunteered to look up the number for him, telling him maybe he could dump the tree branches there on the way out of town. Daren gave me a piece of paper and asked me to write it down for him, thanking me when I brought the paper back out.

I wish I had just taken a pie or a tray of cookies from the oven and could have offered it to Daren and his crew. I wish I had a pot of coffee that I could have carried out to them. Not to play Lady Bountiful, but to let them know I knew that they were doing cold, hard work and that these are cold, hard times. But I didn't have any cookies or coffee and I couldn't think of any gesture, short of hiring them, that would have been meaningful.

Eventually they brought the tree down. The four young men sawed the trunk up, which they stacked neatly for our neighbor's fireplace, and carried the branches to the trailer. I heard rather than saw them drive off, imagining the drive back to Springfield and how much, if anything, they cleared on this job. I hoped they called the company I mentioned so they could lighten their load and save a few dollars.

I know I won't see Daren again. It was one of those small encounters that we all have - a stranger in the checkout line, the person riding the elevator at the hospital, the couple also waiting to be seated at the restaurant. All the same, I find myself wishing fiercely for better times for this young man who is trying so hard just to stay even, let alone get ahead.

I don't know what Christmas holds for Daren but I doubt it is a new flywheel. I hope at the very least it holds a year to come for him - for all of the Darens out there - that is less hurtful and more secure than the one that is just ending.

We could all use a year like that.

Thanksgiving Pie

"I didn't know you could," Carrie breathed, looking wide-eyed at the pie.

"Well, I don't know yet," said Ma. She slipped the pie into the oven and shut the door on it. "But the only way to find out is to try. By dinnertime we'll know."

from The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilders

Longtime fans of the Little House books will recognize the above lines from the time Ma made a green pumpkin pie as a surprise for Pa. Upon tasting the pie, he pronounced it a success: "Ma always could beat the nation cooking."

Ma was on my mind this weekend as I took stock of the remaining Thanksgiving leftovers. Most of what has not been consumed went into the freezer, but there was still a small bowl of homemade cranberry sauce sitting in the refrigerator. What to do, what to do?

When in doubt, bake.

Over the years, I have seen several recipes for cranberry/apple pies. I never made one, but remembered they took fresh cranberries, not cranberry sauce. My sauce was fresh cranberries stewed with sugar and nothing else. If I drained the sauce off and mixed it with the apples, then I wouldn't need anything more than spices to make my pie complete.

So that is what I did this morning. The result is cooling on the table as I type. They say the proof is in the pudding, but in this case the proof is in the pie. We are off to a waffle supper at Margo and Gerald's this evening and we will cut it then. Margo and I frequently talk about Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books, so Ma's quote nudging me this morning fits just right.

The other quote that went through my mind as I crimped the crust today was my favorite from World War II: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

Another era, another book, another time.