Day 109

Today was a hard day. Bill wasn’t feeling well. He started the day with a terrible cough: the kind that frightens me despite all my positive self-talk. I had tasks to attend to and papers to grade. It was 4:00 p.m. by the time I marked the last item off my list. I made a commitment a few days ago to go to my favorite coffee shop and write each day this week. Here I was, day 2 and already my motivation was waning. Somehow I did manage to get myself on my bike with my netbook stashed in the basket and headed for Bucer’s. By the time I reached downtown, I was certain that I would write today. I order a cup of Earl Grey and settled in my favorite spot. Surely it was a good omen: my table was empty, just waiting for me to fill the space and begin writing. First I sat for 10 minutes, just paying attention. There were college kids making too much noise, as a blender whirred in the background. Still I managed to sink down to that place of detached awareness. I was ready for inspiration. I sat the timer and began to write. I managed to compose sentences and string them together but later when I went back to read them they were flat and dull. I was frustrated with the futility of the whole situation. It took such effort just to get myself here only to find that my writing sucks. No wonder so many writers drink.

Day 108

It was just about this time last year when Kat came out. At that time she identified as a trans-woman. Increasingly since then, she identifies as just a woman. There aren’t many people who understand her journey and I have some sense of just how lonely that can be. As her mother, I long to talk with people who understand her struggles, and my own. Last night at a potluck for members of the LGBT community, I met a woman who does research on trans-youth. I told her our story and she reassured me that, although the path is not an easy one, there are trans-people who find a place for themselves in the world. She validated my decision to support Kat unconditionally and empathized with our shared struggle. On the way home I found myself beaming with pride. In spite of all the rejection and abuse Kat endured as a child who did not conform, one who was branded as an outsider, she survived. She didn’t give in to madness or drugs, like so many others. She survived and I know, despite all of my mistakes, I helped her to survive. There have been so many moments when I doubted myself as a parent, tallied my many errors, and lived in fear of the ultimate consequences. For a moment, I was able to put all that aside and recognize the success inherent in getting to this point.

Day 107

When Bill was first diagnosed with lung cancer is was a bit of a shock. He didn't, after all, have any symptoms. Yet, there it was, a large ghostly image on the film. A few weeks ago he started coughing. It progressed into the kind of racking cough that acts on the body like a small-scale earthquake. The coughing frightened me. Underneath the fear was a sense of helplessness. My habit is to respond to helplessness with anger. I would find myself getting angry with Bill when he would cough. Then I would feel guilty: What kind of horrible person gets angry at a person for coughing, especially a person with lung cancer? It was a painful cycle: coughing, fear, helplessness, anger, guilt. This little drama played itself out in my head several times a day. I had to consciously work to accept the coughing. I had to stop seeing it as the enemy in order to disarm my defense system. I am learning to accept the coughing and the cancer that it speaks for. The fear and helpless and anger are slowly being replaced by compassion. Increasingly I find myself empathizing with Bill rather than being angry with him. Maybe I'm not such a horrible person after all; I am only human.

Day 106

I was invited to a potluck dinner tomorrow. Usually I arrive at these things with some exotic dish, something that will make me look sophisticated and interesting, something ethnic like dolmas or trendy like a watermelon and basal salad. Today, I started to imagine what it would be like to show up as myself. What kind of food would I bring? I thought of those cookies they used to serve in the cafeteria at school, the ones that a kid would trade any three other items on the tray for. A heavenly concoction of cocoa, butter and sugar with just enough oatmeal to hold the whole thing together. At my school they were advertised on the weekly menu as Chocolate Dream Cookies. On the days they were served we all felt that the cafeteria gods were smiling down on us. Those are the cookies I will bring tomorrow: sweet, simple, cheap and delicious, everything I am and hope to be. Beside, it beats pork rinds and box wine.

Day 105

It was a bad combination of pharmaceuticals that left me awake at 2:00 a.m., unable to go back to sleep. I got up and went about my morning routine as if it were some reasonable hour of the morning. I opened my email to find a message from Kat. There was an attachment - an essay written for a class on the relationship between mathematics, literature and writing. I started reading and it was like fireworks in my brain, a shot of adrenaline to the cerebellum, calisthenics for my mind. The essay outlined the intersections where numbers and words converge, parallel systems of thought and action. These concepts quite simply blew my mind. For hours, I kept returning to the ideas I read before dawn. It was like playing with a top. I enjoyed watching it spin. When it would die down I would give it another whirl. I have always enjoyed playing with ideas. I sometimes think that it is nothing more than mental masturbation: intoxicating and seductive, but pointless. But other times, like today, I think that the mind is a muscle that must be stretched every so often, otherwise it will atrophy. Our brains become so rigidly programmed, a dose of the novel is just what we need to wake ourselves up.

Day 104

How much of my life has been spent waiting? Waiting to graduate. Waiting to hear if I got the job. Waiting for the results of an important test. Waiting for a letter from the graduate program I applied to. Waiting for him or her to arrive. I turned 19 a few weeks before Kat was due. The due date was marked on the calendar with a big red star. That date came and went. Kat continued to do somersaults in my uterus and the doctor joked that she would walk herself from the delivery room to the nursery if she continued to hold out. I was not laughing. As the days and weeks continued to crawl by I feared that she would never make an appearance. She was 5 weeks overdue when she was born on November 1st. I would like to say that I learned a lot about waiting from that experience, but I didn't. I have never been a patient person. Waiting is just as difficult for me today as it was all those years ago. There are times in life when we anticipate a pivotal change approaching. We can see it on the horizon. As it draws near there is fear and anxiety. What will it be like? How will I cope? It takes us out of the present moment. There have been many days of waiting since Bill's diagnosis: waiting for test results and procedures. Now we are waiting for treatment. I am trying to figure out how to do that more gracefully. In truth, I think that it can't be done. Waiting is never graceful. The only way is to stop waiting and start living. Whatever will be, will be.

Day 103

Over the last 5 weeks my thoughts have been preoccupied with various answers to a single question: What if Bill dies? My initial reaction was panic. I imagined living in our house alone, going to the co-op alone, watching television in the evening alone. It seemed unbearable. I thought about how sad and empty my life would be without his strange sense of humor and his enveloping embrace. Yesterday I met a friend for tea. Sitting in the coffee shop waiting for her to arrive I started to imagine a solo life. Would I spend my time in coffee shops, at the library, at church? Would I make new friends, take car trips, write more? Bill decided to go to bed early last night. Instead of watching television, I made banana bread and listen to NPR. I was starting to see the opportunity that the solo life might present. I have heard it said that when two people become one, you end up with two half people. I am afraid that, in many ways, that is what has happened to me and Bill. I love the time we spend together. However, I now realize that it has become unnecessarily exclusive. This morning I was reading Mary Karr's memoir Lit. She refers to her budding alcohol addiction this way: Maybe it fostered in me a creeping ambition-deficit disorder, but it could ease an ache. So anything worth doing could be undertaken later. Paint the apartment, write a book, quit booze, sure: tomorrow....Which ensures that life gets lived in miniature. Bill's cancer might just be a wake up call, an opportunity to transform our relationship once again, to move from a miniature life characterized by ambition-deficit disorder to something yet to be imagined.

Day 102

I few years ago, I ran across an obscure reference to a book titled Grav dar du star (Dig Where you Stand) by Sven Lindqvist. The book launched a movement in Sweden in the 1970s. Workers and community members began recording the history of local places and spaces. It was an effort to reclaim history by those whose voices had been previously silenced. Dig where you stand: It is more than a title to me, it is simply good advice, particularly for writers. Whenever I find myself asking: What should I write about today? I often respond with these words. Dig where you stand. In other words: What is most alive for me right now? What thoughts and feelings need to be tended to? These are the things that call out for the page.

Day 101

Bill has become increasingly tired over the last few weeks; as a result, my chore list has grown to accommodate his chores, as well as my own. Last night I carefully sorted the recycling and hauled it to the curb. Today I got up and went to the grocery store. When I returned the recycling was scattered in my own yard and the yards of my neighbors. I looked like a crazy woman chasing newspaper and empty plastic bottles caught on the wind. I came home and in a state of utter frustration and anger, responded to an email from a friend. I explained how crappy my life is right now and how pissed off I am about it. I told her that I would never be able to write from this state. She wrote back with this question: What sort of thing would you like to read that would help? Clearly, she was advising me to write that, the thing I most needed to read myself. I knew immediately what I most wanted to hear from the page. I wanted an acknowledgement that indeed life really sucks sometimes. Bill told me a story once about a woman he encountered while working in a psychiatric hospital. She was depressed, suicidal perhaps, when she told him about all of her hardships and struggles. Bill was at a loss for words and simply said, "Wow, your life really sucks." These words were not from the counselors' handbook. Instead, they were honest and real and they conveyed understanding and empathy. Life really does suck sometimes. It is freeing to write these words: no more pretending, no more trying to prop myself up, no need to put on a happy face. I can sit in my discontent and know that as much as I don't like it, I will survive. Who knows, maybe tomorrow will suck just a little less than today.

Day 100

The poet Dean Young wrote: You start with a darkness to move through but sometimes the darkness moves through you. Occasionally, I feel this anger well up in me, in response to the Bill's cancer. Sometimes it is directed at Bill, sometimes it is directed at the blanket left in the living room after a nap, sometimes it is directed at the woman who sits behind the counter at the lab and chats with a friend while we sit waiting for yet another blood draw. It is almost never directed at the cancer. The cancer, after all, is deaf and indifferent. I suppose I am angry at my own powerlessness. I couldn't make my dad stop drinking, I couldn't heal the fractured mind of my first husband and I can't cure Bill's cancer. I am utterly powerless and it really pisses me off.

Day 99

Some days I can't even think of anything to have for dinner. How can I be expected to write?

Day 98

Up at 4:00 a.m., we had to be at the hospital by 5:45. With a 45 minute drive to get there, we didn't have much time to acclimate to the day. Just as well, Bill couldn't have coffee, or anything else to eat or drink. I surreptitiously sipped tea and ate a piece of banana bread while Bill sat staring into space. We were both nervous. The test today would reveal whether or not the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. So much hangs in the balance. The ride from Moscow to the hospital in Lewiston was tense. I am not used to driving in the dark. It makes me feel old and sad to realize that I am already become one of those people. Once at the hospital, we are ushered into a room where Bill is instructed to undress and given a paper gown to change into. Somehow in taking off his clothes, I fear that he is being stripped of his identity. He looks so vulnerable laying there in the narrow bed. Soon they will wheel the bed to an operating room where they will anesthetize him and do God knows what. Bill and I are both lost in fearful daydreams when Brenda comes into the room. She is a tiny woman with a generous smile, a shock of black curls and sparkling eyes. Her badge says: RN. She asks a series of medical questions, the same questions Bill has answered dozens of times in the last few weeks. The repetition can be tiring but Brenda's tone is conversational. She immediately puts us at ease. As she completes the routine medical tests, she asks about our lives and tells us about her love of gardening. We talk about the approach of springtime and our shared aversion to new technologies. Bill tells her the story of how the cancer was discovered and she says: "Wow, you've had a difficult month, haven't you?" No apologies, no platitudes, just empathetic understanding, pure and simple. I have heard it said that our problems always come bearing gifts. Brenda must be one of those gifts.

Day 97

Growing up, my home had all the hallmarks of instability: too young parents, poverty, alcoholism, depression. I longed for some bedrock upon which to build my life. More than anything I wanted to bring order to the chaos. Even as a child, I was neat and organized and diligent and hard working, at times obsessively so. By the time I was in my twenties, I had come to realize that while I could control my actions, I couldn't control the outcomes and I certainly couldn't control other people. I felt small and insignificant: helpless. I sought support from groups that met in church basements. Adult children, we called ourselves. Never was a name more apt. Around the same time, I started reading about the occult. My friend Donna and I would visit psychics when we could afford it. When we were broke, which was most of the time, we would bring out our own tarot cards and attempt to read the obscure messages of the Hanged Man or the High Priestess. We smiled at the future when the Lovers appeared and cringed in response to Death. We wanted so much to believe that the future was already written, that we could divine it and prepare ourselves. Somewhere along the way I stopped believing in prophecy or magic, but I never stopped longing for certainty and stability. One thing is certain about living with cancer: nothing is certain. The doctor says: Your cancer hasn't spread with a tone and inflection that suggests: well, probably not. A course of treatment is laid out only to be changed later. Office workers and nurses convey information that is changed at the will of doctors. Dates, locations, instructions, plans and protocol are all tentative. One has to learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Ah great, another fucking growth opportunity.

Day 96

I woke up this morning and prayed for sleep to reclaim me. When it refused I reluctantly rolled out of bed. I didn't want to face the day. More to the point, I didn't want to face my feelings: the feelings of frustration and fear that starting welling up in me at the surgeon's office yesterday. I didn't want to hear his concerns about the prospects that perhaps the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes or invaded the chest cavity. These aren't just spare parts were talking about here. This cancer has claimed part of a person I love. I want to believe in the magic of medicine to make it all better but it is clear that the cancer is a mighty and mysterious adversary. I am afraid. Yesterday, I proclaimed my commitment to managing gracefully. I suspect that in order to live gracefully I can't allow my feelings to be in the driver's seat, nor can I lock them away in the trunk. I have to allow them to pass through. I have to feel them and recognize that they are nothing more than mind clouds.

Day 95

The work that writers do is crucial to the healing of world. They give us words to describe our desires, our joys and our heartaches. The words can move us toward understanding, the first step in healing. At least that's the way it is for me. I am a true believer in what Gloria Steinem calls bibiotherapy. A few days ago, Sylvia Boorstein, gave me the words managing gracefully. She named my deepest desire at this point in my life, particularly as I face with Bill the challenge of cancer. More than anything I want to manage gracefully. I know that it is what he wants for me, as well as himself. It is a gift I can give him and myself. It was always the fear that blocked my path to grace in the past. Loss triggered fear and I responded by trying to defend myself: I would lash out at anyone or anything I perceived as a threat, not very gracefully, I might add. Now I know that in order to manage gracefully, I must attend to the pain: the fear, the sadness, the loss and the regret. I have to sit with it and listen to it as I would a friend. That intention is what is most alive for me today.

Day 94

I picked up Mary Karr's new memoir, Lit, this morning. The preface is written to her son. She talks about the pain she created in his life and how she hopes that the story she is about to tell will help him fill in the blanks. She is, in essence, offering the gift of her truth. Yet she starts by saying that it is all a lie in recognition that there is no Truth. I put down the book and got in the shower, a place where I do some of my best thinking. I started to imagine rewriting the preface to the memoir I started a few months ago. I haven't touched it in a month, or more. But suddenly I felt inspired. The words were as accessible as the water that rained down from the tap. I made two mental notes. One, read more Mary Karr. Two, invent a way to write in the shower.

Day 93

I was savoring the last few pages of Kim Barnes's Hungry for the World when I ran across a passage that answers the question: Why do I write? She says: I think of the Inuit way: a wolf bone whittled to a point at both ends, coiled and frozen in blubber, left along the path of bears. The bear eats it and weakens slowly, over miles, over days, the bone twisting and slashing, killing from the inside out. Shame feels this way, swallowed and sharp, working its way deeper with each move to dislodge the pain, so that finally, we lie still, dying with blood in our mouths. We eat our stories and starve. I write to save myself. I write because I must.

Day 92

I used to work for the National Council on Alcoholism. I had a co-worker and friend named Pat who was "in recovery." It was the 1980s when those words had a particular meaning. Pat was older and wiser than me, often repeating colloquialisms common in the church basement circles she frequented. In response to my never ending quest for truth, Pat would sometimes say: "The truth is simple." I never asked what she meant because it seemed to go against the principle of the thing she was saying. But I tucked her wisdom away and sometimes when the words swirled in my head and my tendency toward analysis left me feeling like I was spinning in circles it would come back to me: the truth is simple. Later, as a graduate student, my teachers tried to convince me that the truth is quite complicated. They used words to obscure the truth: words that only an elite few have access to. I would read Habermas and Foucault convinced that there was a pearl of wisdom deep beneath the surface of the words. Why did they insist on hiding it under the silt and sand? The writers I admire most today are those who use words sparsely. I love finding a simple truth on the page: naked and real, accessible and unadorned. This morning I was reading a book by Sylvia Boorstein appropriately titled It's Easier Than You Think. On page 4, she defines mindfulness as: "the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience." This practice, she says, allows one to "manage gracefully." It doesn't get much more simple than that.

Day 91

With his Indian accent, the little brown man in the Brooks Brothers suit said, "The cancer has not spread." I could feel the key slip into the lock at that very moment. I could hear the clink of metal on metal as it turned, the creak of the heavy steal door swinging open. I was free from the prison I have been in for the last few weeks. It was a prison of my own making, of course, but I needed those words to free me. Trapped by fear, I didn't know how to escape on my own. I would have figured it out eventually, but I needed time. And that was my greatest fear of all, that there would not be enough time. I am not so naive as to believe that the doctor's pronouncement means that the road ahead will be easy. Cancer, even in its infancy, is often cruel, particularly when it has someone you love in its grips. But it's not really cancer or even death that I fear. My greatest fear is that I/we will never reach that state of grace that comes from acceptance. The doctor says we have time. I know that this is an invitation to begin the journey.

Day 89

Yesterday my friend Barb sent me a reminder to check out her Facebook page: Writing From the Heart (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Writing-from-the-Heart/127562750646902). There was a link on her page to an article titled Permission to Suck by Linda Gerber. It provided exactly the advice I needed. Lately, with so much going on in my life, I am not sure that I have the energy to write. This article was a reminder that it doesn't take much energy to write if we give up the notion of writing well. Writing is easy if we allow ourselves to suck; and, since first drafts generally suck anyway, what do I have to lose? I can't always compose lyrical prose or make profound observations, but I can get something on the page every single day. The practice is infinitely more important than the product.

Day 88

I don't care if you are Protestant, Muslim, Mormon or Pentecostal; gay, straight or queer; a mortician, a bus driver, a school teacher or a biker. My motto: to each her own. I try to reserve judgement, I really do. But tell me that you don't read and I automatically relegate you to a special purgatory, a place where you can stay until you can be made to see the depths of your sin and repent (at which time you will be issued a library card and an Amazon.com account). My judgement is especially harsh when an individual claims a love of words and a desire to write, yet still refuses to make time for a good novel or juicy memoir. My judgement grows out of my own passion for language. Although I am a slow and plodding reader and I often struggle to find the time to do the things I love, I make time everyday to read. Occasionally, I read a passage that is a revelation and a miracle. A few days ago, I was reading Kim Barne's Hungry For the World when I ran across this passage: This is what I know of seduction: it can be flowered and perfumed, or it can spring from sweat and darkness; it can come sweet and slow, or fast and hard like birth. It can find you at work or at home, awake or asleep. It can begin with a kiss or the withholding of a kiss. It's a flower that opens, a bruise the spreads. It is words like these that ignite my evangelical zeal for reading. How could they not?

Day 87

When Bill got sick a few years ago, it was as if he wandered into a dark labyrinth. Sadly, I followed. It didn't take long for us to veer in different directions: each of us alone and lost. It took me a very long time to find my way out. I am so afraid of being lost again. Since Bill's diagnosis a few weeks ago, I have been struggling with the question of how to take care of myself through the coming weeks and months. My instincts say that I should relieve myself of all unnecessary responsibilities: let go of the daily duties and obligations that consume my precious time. But perhaps it is the daily rituals that keep us grounded in times like these. Perhaps now, more than ever, I need to get up each day and sit and write and exercise and prepare the food for a healthy diet. These rituals keep me focused in the here and now; they help me to be present and aware. They are a touchstone when I feel myself being drawn back into that labyrinth.

Day 85

Yesterday I was waiting with Bill in the lobby of the St. Joseph Medical Center in Lewiston. At the reception desk was a small woman who looked to be about 60. She had the kind of far off gaze that is not uncommon in psychiatric patients. I saw her leave the desk with a shuffling walk and slowly return with a paper cup presumably full of coffee. She looked sad, despite her pink smock and yellow nametag that proclaimed: "Hi, I'm Nancy."

She sat her coffee down behind the reception desk and wandered out into the lobby where a number of us sat waiting. She approached a greying woman who was reading Better Homes and Gardens and stared at her intently from a distance of no more than two feet. The woman lowered her magazine as if to say Can I help you?

"Are you alright?" Nancy asked with genuine concern.

A look of confusion crossed the face of the grey haired woman.

"I'm fine," she stammered.

"I'm not," Nancy said, looking even more dejected than she had a moment earlier, "I have degenerative dementia."

The grey haired woman stared at Nancy for what seemed liked minutes before she reached out and touched her arm, as if to say: It's alright, you're not alone.

We have spent many hours in hospital waiting rooms and cafeterias over the last few weeks. It is like having a front row seat in an endless parade of suffering. I find myself asking: Why is there so much suffering? What is the meaning of it all? I think that perhaps Nancy knows the answer. It is the suffering that brings us together and allows us to connect.

Day 84

You can always tell which bible verses are the best: it's the ones on which rock songs are based. One of my favorites is: To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

I"m starting to think that perhaps that's what the creative life is all about: living in the season. I ask myself: What is my purpose now?

Day 83

I didn't blog yesterday. What a relief. One less thing to do. One less obligation. I did journal but there was none of the pressure that comes from knowing that others can and may read the words I put to paper (or to screen). Yesterday I was certain that I should put the blog behind me and in the process unburden myself.

I woke up this morning thinking about the blog. I was nervous about giving it up. I know that the practice is what makes me a writer. I can't give up the practice. For the last year, the blog has been an important part of my writing practice. Not only was I committed to writing each day; I shared that commitment with others.

What I know for sure is that I need to maintain a writing practice now, especially now. How do I decide what form that practice takes?

Day 81

A few months ago I downloaded back episodes of the television show Hoarders. A neat freak myself, I was fascinated with the clutter and chaos that was revealed in the lives of those who were profiled on the show. I recognized some part of myself in them. Although I don't hoard things, I do form impermeable attachments to people, places, routines and activities. I have a hard time letting go.

I have been blogging everyday now for over a year. Lately I have been thinking that perhaps it is time to let go of the blog. It is no longer inspired or inspiring. I struggle to find things to write about. So much of what is happening in my life right now is too raw and deeply personal to share. I lack the energy to write about other things.

On Hoarders a whole team of professionals: cleaners, organizers, and therapists come into the home and move out the clutter, while coaching the homeowner to release the objects on an emotional level. Illness in a family has a way of doing the same thing: it takes a broom to our priorities, it helps us sort out the clutter to make room for the essential work that must be done. I'm going through that process now and trying to figure out of the blog has a role in my life as it is today.

Day 80

Like an overzealous baker who refuses to let the dough rise, I have a tendency to overwork my problems. I knead and think and knead and talk and knead and write and knead and plan, refusing to let the yeast do its work. Occasionally I let go and allow an answer to rise to the surface naturally. This usually happens when I am too tired or too distracted to work the problem myself.

A few weeks ago I found that my writing practice wasn't working for me. I didn't fret over it. I simply put it down and held the intention for a new practice that would work for me now. It is during these times, when I stop thinking so much, that my best plans emerge. First, I had a dream that guided me to consider writing fiction for a time. Then I started to take notice of the ways that Bill and I are being moved by the experience of cancer. The moments that remind me that cancer is a good teacher. I'm not sure why, but I know that these are moments I need to record.

Suddenly, I have a new writing practice. It is like taking a golden loaf of fragrant bread from the oven. I can't wait to cut into it.

Day 79

One of the things that I have been thinking about lately is how I might maintain a writing practice with all of the other demands that might be put on me over the next few months. Writing memoir can be healing, but it is also emotionally draining. I'm not sure that I will have the emotional energy to continue that kind of writing practice.

After being sick the night before, last night I slept hard. I had a long, elaborate dream. It was like watching a movie. The characters were fully developed and there was a strong plot. It was about a teacher who had a son who went into the military against her wishes. He is discharged prior to his expected release and comes back preoccupied and depressed. He refuses to talk about his experiences in Iraq and rarely leaves his room in the basement. One day he meets one of his mother's students: a beautiful little girl of about 10. She is wearing a pick ribbon in her hair when they meet. A few days later the girl is missing. The teacher suspects that her son had something to do with the little girl's disappearance. She decides to search his room and finds the pink ribbon there. She ends of testifying in his trial and her son goes to prison for the murder of the little girl.

When I woke up I was aware of two things. First, that I had created this story in my sleep. And second, that it was a welcome escape from the reality of my own life right now. Fiction may very well be the kind of writing that I need at this point in my life.

Day 78

Remember the chestburster scene from Alien? What about the scene from The Exorcist where Linda Blair's character spews all over the priest? I had a similar scene in my own bathroom last night, or at least it felt like it from where I sat on the toilet, uncontrollably vomiting into the trash can.

In the wee hours of the morning it started to feel as if my body was not my own. I was not in control. At first I resisted. My resistance only made the heaving more violent. Perhaps it was sheer exhaustion, but at some point I decided to surrender. I decided to let my body do what it needed to do to rid itself of the poison. Once I surrendered, it became easier. A calm settled over me.

Sometimes I wonder how much easier all of life would be if I could only learn to surrender.

Day 77

All week I have been thinking about the thousands of people who are diagnosed with cancer everyday. I have been thinking about their families. I have been thinking about the millions of hours spent waiting: those hours between the diagnosis and the treatment plan when time seems to stand still and fear is a constant companion.

Yesterday we saw the oncologist for the first time. I had already imagined what he might say. Even before he had a face, I could hear his voice saying: Stage 4. There is no hope. Go home and take care of your affairs. Words from a movie. I knew that they were not grounded in reality but they frightened me none the less.

My fear began to dissipate the minute he came in the room: this little brown man with an East Indian accent. He was stern, but polite. His first question: "Do you know why you're here?" So any possible answers: Because we did something wrong? Because the world is full of pain and suffering? Because cancer is a change agent in a world where everyone and everything is impermanent? Bill avoided the philosophical pitfalls and stuck to the medical facts instead. He provided a detailed description of the chain of events that led us to that moment. The doctor listened and then he said: "I think that your cancer is stage 2. I think that you are a good candidate for surgery. I think that we can cure your cancer."

Stage 2 cancer: cause for celebration. Who would have thought?

Day 76

I have been writing most of my life but I didn't become a writer until very recently. It happened as I was working on my dissertation. For many months, I would go to Bucer's everyday, order a pot of tea, crank up my ancient laptop, read what I had written the day before and start putting new words on the page. I developed a writing practice.

Since then, my writing practice has changed. Reading Julie Cameron's book The Artist's Way encouraged me to develop a writing practice centered on the morning pages. I would get up each morning, eat my oatmeal and tea, pull out my college lined notebook with butterflies on the cover and being writing: whatever came to mind, that's what I would put on the page. I would usually write three pages, put the notebook aside and pull out the thick journal I was using to record pieces of a memoir I was working on. I would dictate at least three pages of the memoir before I went on with my day.

I have ignored the morning pages and the memoir for the last few weeks. Each time I try to return to the morning pages, I am overwhelmed, flooded with emotion. The memoir seems less relevant than it did a few weeks ago, trumped by new concerns. Still I recognize the importance of maintaining a practice. The practice is what separates a writer from those who simply write.

Day 75

I remember as a kid having contests with my friends to see which one of us could hold our breath the longest. We would face each other with rounded cheeks and bulging eyes as the seconds ticked by. Time miraculously slowed down. Just when it seemed that the hands on the clock would stop all together, one of us would give, releasing a gale on the winner before gasping for another breath.

It seems that I have been holding my breath for the last week. It was just about this time 7 days ago when we got the verdict on the mass in Bill's lung. We are still waiting for more answers. Tomorrow we see the oncologist. We are hoping for clarity, hoping for a chance to take another breath.

Day 74

Spring arrived on the Palouse yesterday. I was driving home from the store when I suddenly felt warm. The air was humid. I wanted to drive with the window down and feel the warm wind against my face.

As I was unloading groceries from my trunk, tiny white marbles of ice started to fall from the sky. I stood in the driveway for a moment trying to remember the specific atmospheric conditions that give rise to a hail storm. Finally, I gave up and decided that it was a gift from the gods: a sign that spring is here.

This morning when I looked out the window I was surprised to discover that the snow was all gone, melted sometime in the last week. The ground was wet from a recent rain: the kind of rain that ushers in new life. I saw a rabbit wiggle out from under our patio and hop across the street.

It's so easy to get caught up in our own little lives ; we forget that life is always beginning again.

Day 73

It has been 5 days since the man on the other end of the phone muttered Cancer. Since then, the days have expanded to make room for our fear and anger and uncertainty. Mostly there is uncertainty. Everyday there are new questions: What will happen? How long? What then? Waiting for the answers is hell, especially because we know that the road ahead will be filled with more uncertainty. Somehow we have to find a way to stop waiting and start living again.

This morning I woke up to the pressures of a new week: a week that is totally unaware and unsympathetic to cancer. There are groceries to buy and food to prepare and papers to grade. I was thinking about these obligations as I walked into the kitchen for a caffeine fix. There was a puddle on the floor around the dishwasher.

"It's leaking," Bill said.

I imagined myself sitting on the floor in front of the dishwasher, sobbing. It's not fair, we don't deserve a broken dishwasher. I can't deal with a broken dishwasher, now! I imagined myself dragging the old, broken down piece of shit out to the yard. I saw myself swinging a sledgehammer, busting the thing to pieces, pulverizing it into tiny bits of plastic and metal. I imagined how good it would feel to destroy the damn thing.

Occasionally I find myself thinking about this commitment I have made to the creative life. It seems impossible to create in the presence of a diabolic enemy like cancer, an enemy that threatens someone you treasure. And yet, the sad and simple truth is that I can do little else. I can't take a sledgehammer to the cancer. The only thing I can do is to pay attention and try to make something beautiful from the tiny bits of plastic and metal left behind.

Day 72

Several years ago I was reading a book by Marianne Williamson. She said that people often come up to her after speaking engagements. With desperate voices and pleading eyes they ask for guidance. She asks them: "Do you have a spiritual practice? Do you meditate or pray on a regular basis?" knowing full well that they do not.

It became clear to me then that if I wanted to have peace in my life I had to establish the kind of practice Marianne Williamson wrote about. I started sitting: 20 minutes a day. I didn't have a zafu or a fancy meditation timer. I just sat and it did bring me peace.

Recently, I started a writing practice: what Julie Cameron calls morning pages. The writing is another form of meditation. Both the writing and the sitting make me more aware of my thoughts; they both clear out the clutter in my head. Over the last few months the writing has replaced the sitting as my primary form of meditation.

Now I find myself avoiding the morning pages. I am avoiding my thoughts and feelings, preferring instead to be engaged in mindless activity or conversation. I don't want to be alone with myself on the page. I can feel my anxiety mounting in direct proportion to the avoidance.

Seeing my rising anxiety, Bill suggested the perhaps I should return to my sitting practice. It took me most of the day to build up my courage. During the first few moments of sitting I was aware of my racing thoughts: What if...What if...What if...My awareness dropped down into my body and I was aware of my nerve endings, I had the distinct sensation that there were ants crawling just under the surface of my skin. In the pit of my stomach was a hard knot, the size of a baseball. I just continued to breath. After several minutes, I could feel my consciousness drop down to another level, as if all those other sensations were merely on the surface. Below the surface was an oasis of peace. It was the first truly peaceful moment I have experienced in over a week.

Day 71

I have been wrestling with fear a lot over the last week. I have been observing it, watching the way it rises and sets, waxes and wanes, comes in and moves out, like the tide. What I have noticed is that fear is always a reaction to some imagined future event.

Suppose someone has a gun to my head. I am likely to feel fearful. But it is not the gun that I fear or the person holding the gun. My fear is a reaction to the scene playing in my head, a scene in which the person holding the gun pulls the trigger.

Fear never lives in the present. Right now, that's where I need to live.

Day 70

"Are you going to write about it?" he asked.

"What?" I replied, as if I didn't know.

"You know, what we're going through..." he answered.

I didn't share my first reaction which was NO! Hell, no! There are enough blogs, and books and stories and articles devoted to cancer. I am more interested in writing about those moments of grace when I am present and aware and certain of my place in the universe. I do not want to turn my life over to cancer. I do not want to sacrifice my peace of mind on the alter of fear.

I've been thinking a lot about the time 9 years ago when Bill developed a serious illness that put us on a medical merry-go-round. We had only been married about a year. We came home one day from a round of medical appointments and as I was making dinner I looked down to discover that my wedding ring was gone.

I searched frantically in the crisper compartment of the refrigerator, in the garage where I had been cleaning earlier; I remember sorting through the garbage with tears streaming down my face. As a last resort I got back in my car and drove to the office of Bill's doctor. The office manager met me at the door, she was just closing up. I was crying hysterically at this point, trying to explain about my ring between gasps and hiccups.

What I couldn't explain was the certainty with which I felt that losing the ring was a bad omen. I had read once about a superstition that associates a lost wedding ring with the death of a spouse. As crazy as it seems in hindsight, I feared that my carelessness would cost Bill his life.

Our wedding rings were made for us by a family member, an artisan who specializes in metallurgy. On the surface of each of our rings he etched the Chinese symbol for grace. Grace is a gift. To live in grace is to live in gratitude. The only way to do that is to be fully present and recognize the fullness of each moment. When Bill got sick, we stopped doing that. That is one of my greatest regrets.

It's funny how life gives you do-overs, even when you would rather take a pass. I don't know what lies ahead for us. But I do know that I am committed to maintaining my peace of mind and to being present for Bill. I refuse to see cancer as an enemy. Instead, I am trying to welcome it, as an opportunity for grace.

Day 69

Yesterday, it was a relief to write: an escape, an opportunity to slip into an imagined past, a place where I was young and naive and invincible. The empty page is, for me, a recently discovered refuge. Yesterday, I needed one and it was there. For that, I am grateful.

Today, I am too exhausted to write. It is such an effort to put together words, to form sentences, to conceptualize phrases. Today, the words seem empty, hollow, meaningless. Today, I want to go to the pool and float on the surface of the water and let my mind be completely empty. I want to bake banana bread: mashing, sifting, stirring, as if it is my reason for being. I want to sip tea and watch the people at the co-op as they buy yogurt and eat kale salad, completely oblivious to cancer. Today, I want to rest.

Tomorrow or someday soon I will feel renewed. Then I will write.

Day 68

When I was in high school, my best friend Donna and I used to cruise Columbia Park. There was a strip that ran the length of the large park and kids would drive from one end to the other checking each other out. We would occasionally pull into an alcove of trees to smoke a joint and offer ourselves like bait to the guys who passed by.

John was one of those guys. He pulled up next to my white Chevy Nova and offered to get us high. We smoked his weed and laughed at his jokes. He was hooked: he practically begged us to meet up with him the next day. He would bring his friend Steve and we could all hang out.

Donna and Steve did more than hook up, they developed a serious relationship which got in the way of our cruising and put me in close proximity to John on a regular basis. John had a crush on me that he expressed by giving me replacement parts for my car which he ordered from the dealership. The fact that John was a drug dealer precluded me from having any kind of relationship with him, but I was flattered by his attention.

John and I were sitting alone on the sofa in the living room at Steve's apartment one night, trying to ignore the grunts and moans leaking through the crack beneath the bedroom door. I was rambling about something: sexism, my pain-in-the-ass history teacher, lip gloss, whatever it is that teenage girls find interesting. John looked at me through bloodshot eyes and said: "You know Debbie, ideas just don't seem real to you until you say them out loud."

I thought it was the most profound observation anyone had ever made about me. At that age, my mind was like a high speed pitching machines: shooting off ideas, rapid fire and haphazard, most failing to reach a target. I longed to be heard. It took me another 15 years to find someone who really listened with his whole heart. What an amazing gift. It is a gift I am still trying to learn to reciprocate

Yesterday afternoon, Bill and I were in the living room when the phone rang. Even with the phone pressed to Bill's ear, I could hear the deep, excited voice of Dr. Gordon, the radiologist who did the biopsy last week. Even then, as we waited, barely able to breath, there were formalities to dispense with. Then he said: "Well, it's not great news." My heart sank.

As the light from the setting sun dimmed our living room, Bill and I cried and talked. We shared our darkest fears and our deepest hopes. We opened ourselves up and invited each other in. Once again, I was reminded of the sacred place we have created for each other, with each other. It is a place where cancer cannot go.

Day 67

Every so often I find myself up to my neck in a pile of dung. My tendency is to whine and complain and bitch and moan. Other times I just plug my nose and close my eyes and pretend that I am wrapped in a warm blanket, ignoring the fact that I am smothered in dung. Even worse is when I try to fight my way out: I end of flinging dung on everyone around me.

I am learning that even when I find myself up to my neck in a pile of dung, I can stop and pay attention. When I do, I sometimes find that there are gems buried there in the dung with me. I have to look closely and I have to be willing to dig in and pull them out. It may be difficult to see their brilliance when they are covered in dung. It's up to me to receive these precious gifts in a spirit of gratitude, in spite of the dung.

Day 66

Sometimes I think that my mind is like a big old Victorian house. It is three stories high with a half dozen rooms on every floor. On sunny days it has a certain quirky charm with its lacy gingerbread trim and ornate towers and turrets. It changes appearance, however, with the weather. On stormy days it it cast in darkness; the peeling paint and sagging porch seem suddenly sinister and foreboding.

There are so many rooms; I find myself wondering from one to another. There are rooms where I can imagine and create. There are rooms for more practical things like making biscuits and mending clothes. There are rooms for rest.

Occasionally I find myself ascending the narrow stairs to the attic: the place where the memories are stored. If I am not careful, I can get mesmerized by the contents of the old trunks and dusty boxes. When this happens it is difficult to find my way back.

The one place I try to avoid is the basement. It is dark with walls of grey concrete. The dirt floor is damp. The air is dank and murky. I wandered down to the basement once and allowed the door to slam shut behind me. I stumbled from room to room, looking for an exit. Just when I had given up all hope, I laid down against the damp earth and looked up to see a sliver of light. There was one tiny window that provided an escape to the outside world.

These days I prefer the sunny parlor on the east side of the house. It has a big bay window. I like to sit in my rocking chair and look out at the parade that is my life. There are so many amazing things to see and hear and feel. And they pass by so quickly.

Day 65

I heard a story once about a man who was saved by a book. A bullet, aimed at his heart, was deflected and became lodged in the book he carried in his breast pocket. It was probably just an urban legend but it seemed so real to me, perhaps because I could remember all the times I was rescued by books.

The first books I ever owned were given to me at Christmas: the whole set of Little House on the Prairie books. I was eight years old and living with my mom and dad and little brother in a trailer park. The tiny trailer my parents rented sat at the edge of a gravel road that was more dirt than gravel. My room was no bigger than the closet I now share with my husband, but it had a sliding door and a built in bunk where I could lay down and read. Laying there, I began to imagine a world that was so much bigger than anything that could be contained in a 12 x 60 metal box.

On Friday they took a small sample of the tumor that sits at the base of Bill's right lung. Now, as we wait for the results of the biopsy, I find myself wishing for a book to show us the way, a book that will save us. There are moments when I feel that I am inside a tiny metal box and the walls are closing in. I need a wide open view of the prairie.

I can't seem to concentrate to read much right now. Yet I am certain it is a book that will save me. So I think back to some of the books I love, the titles that saved me once before. Jane Hamilton's Map of the World reminded me that sometimes our lives can change in an instant. We are thrown off course. We become bewildered and lost. We have to start over again; we have to find a new map.

I suppose that is what I am afraid of what now. I am afraid of news that might alter our lives in unimaginable ways. It is frightening to travel a new road. I'm not sure that I am strong enough. Bill has a book on the shelf that I have never read. It is titled How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything. I suppose in some ways it really is that simple. Whatever happens, we will handle it the same way we handled all the challenges that came before. We will do it together.

I am certain that the problems ahead will also come bearing gifts. Alice Walker wrote a book called Possessing the Secret of Joy about a young African women on trial for killing a tribal elder who was performing female circumcisions. From that book, I learned about the kind of joy that can flourish in spite of incarceration. It is the same kind of joy that lives in spite of sickness and even death. As I reflect on that book, I am reminded that whatever lies ahead, there will also be joy.

Day 64

It took me a long time to become a writer. It took me a long time to learn to pay attention. A writer who cannot pay attention, focus, remain aware, has very little to write about.

Over the last few days, as I followed Bill from doctor's office to hospital, from his room on the critical care unit to radiology where he was wheeled by a fast walking young man with a hint of facial hair, from the second floor of to the front door of the hospital where he was escorted by the wise-cracking red-haired nurse who hugged him before she sent him on his way, I was watching and listening, not only to people and places around me, but also to the drama within me: the anticipation, the confusion, the fear.

When I pay attention it is easy to see that each moment contains a whole world of possibility: pain, suffering, joy, gratitude, love, hate...it's all there waiting to be written about...

Day 63

Bill is in the hospital. Last night when I came home alone my imagination started weaving all kinds of new plots. I imagined myself living here alone: getting up in the morning to an empty kitchen, the bar stool he normally fills while he drinks his coffee and reads the morning newspaper empty. I imagined going to the co-op alone: sitting by myself at a table eating deli food made bland by the lack of conversation. I imagined myself watching television alone at night: staring blankly at the screen wishing for a some witty commentary, the kind Bill is so good at. I imagined sleeping all alone in our big king sized bed, the one we picked out together, the one that was never intended for one person.

I used to think that I didn't have much imagination. Yet I have always written these kinds of stories. They are stories grounded in fear. I see now that imagination can be a dangerous vessel. It can take me to the darkest corners of my soul. It is up to me to navigate and steer. It is up to me to be aware and use my imagination to create something that is grounded in love rather than fear.

Day 62

I went to the doctor yesterday with Bill to get answers to the question of a syndrome of vague symptoms that he has been plagued with for about a month. Tests were ordered to rule out the more troubling possibilities. Neither Bill nor I flinched when the earnest young doctor used the word Cancer. We listened and nodded and did the next thing.

I followed Bill to the lab for a blood draw and sat in the waiting room reading an well-worn issue of Sunset while he had a chest x-ray. I found a couple of good recipes and thought about donating the stacks of old magazines Bill has stored in his office.

We left the clinic and went to the co-op for a late lunch. Over kale salad and sweet potato fritters, we talked about illness and death. What if? How would we care for each other? How would we cope? I remember feeling so grateful for the intimacy: an intimacy made sweeter by the reminder that the future is not a guarantee.

The phone rang while we were putting away the groceries from the co-op. It was the doctor. I handed the phone to Bill and opened the pantry door to shelve the rice noodles and the Tangerine Orange Zinger tea. I felt surprising detached as I listened to Bill's end of the conversation, although a winced just a little when I heard him ask: "Is it painful?"

He got off the phone and relayed the conversation to me, in much the same way the pretty young anchor people report the news. The results from the tests were back already. There was a cause for concern. The doctor was ordering more tests. He had to be at the hospital tomorrow at 11:45.

I remained calm and detached throughout this whole course of events. I didn't allow myself to catastrophize. Each time my mind tried to hurl me into some imagined catastrophic future, I refused to go. I took a deep breath and stayed grounded in the present: the place where Bill and I are together in our home. It is a safe place.

I was doing so well. I started to feel rather smug about my spiritual progress. Here I was faced with a potential crisis and I was at peace. I was a frickin Buddha. I sat down at my desk to check my email. There was a message from a friend full of simple kindnesses. Suddenly my face was wet with tears.

Almost immediately I had a name for the place these tears came from. I thought: pain-body. It is a term coined by Eckhart Tolle to refer to the pain we carry with us: unresolved grief associated with past events. The events of the day had reawakened in me the pain body that is linked to past abandonment.

There is only one way to deal with the pain body. You have to name it, honor it, nurture it, invite it to tea. Like a baby, it needs to held and rocked and sung to.

Day 61

I spent the last two days grading papers. Not long after posting the grades, I started receiving complaints:

You said that I didn't clearly respond to the questions posed in the assignment instructions. I think that I did.

I posted my paper 3 minutes late and you imposed a late penalty. Unfair!

I followed the recommendations of the grammar checker and you still found grammatical errors. What's the deal with that?

I found myself getting increasingly irritated with these messages. It was difficult to respond with anything other than defensiveness and anger.

What I really wanted was appreciation. I wanted the students to see my intention: to help them learn and develop the skills they need to be successful in the future. I think it's what we all want: to know that our efforts make a difference in the lives of others.

In my own life, this need for appreciation comes second only to my need for self-expression: to be heard and understood. While I recognize that writing can help me meet these needs, I also recognize that it may not.

What I write may never be heard or understood. It may never be appreciated. It may never contribute to the world in any kind of meaningful way. What then? Do I try to fill my cup from a different stream? Or do I stare at the empty cup and allow the frustration and anger to well up in me and then write about that?

Day 60

Last night as I was making myself dinner, I listened to an interview with one of my favorite authors, Joyce Carol Oates. She recently penned a memoir: On Becoming a Widow. It has been three years since her husband died. She talked about the empty place in her life that was left with his death.

It seems trite to use words like best friends or soul mates to describe a marriage. Her marriage was clearly so much more than those words can convey, as is mine. Listening to her, I naturally thought about what it would be like to be without Bill. My eyes begin to sting even as I type the words.

Just a year after we got married, seven years into our relationship, Bill got very sick. I remember waiting in the sterile hospital waiting room while he had surgery. Anyone who has ever waited in one of these rooms surely knows just how alone one can be in a cloud of people. I remember sitting there, thinking: I cannot go on without him. I literally could not imagine my life without him in it.

Last night as I listened to Joyce Carol Oates talk about the day her husband passed and how certain she was that her own life was over, I realized how much I have changed since that day in the waiting room. I have learned to live with pain. I am less inclined to resist and avoid. I choose to feel. That choice is a road of opportunity. I am learning to take care of myself. The writing is a good example. I have found a companion in the empty page.

Joyce Carol Oates fell in love again and got remarried two years after the death of her husband. Our stories just keep changing and evolving...

Day 59

My mom is a truth teller. That may be her greatest gift to me. She never tried to hide herself away, the way so many mothers do. She was never a mystery to me and that made me less of a mystery to myself.

One day I found a baby book in the bottom of a box of old pictures and keepsakes. It had an ivory satin cover that was yellowed with age. On the front was a faded image of a smiling infant. I opened it to find my name written in big script on the first page. It was the handwriting of a young girl, a girl who, at the age of 17, should have been attending prom instead of tending to a newborn.

I turned to the page marked "First Year." There my mother had written a short paragraph intended to serve as an overview of my first year of life. She said that I was beautiful and smart. Don't all mothers believe their children to be those things? It was the next few lines that caught my attention. She said that she didn't know what she would do without me. I was her whole world.

I have thought a lot about those words in the years since I first read them. I have imagined myself as that baby, walking on unstable legs, not yet weened from the bottle, yet bestowed with the power to save her mother. I was a hero before I could tie my own shoelaces. It was the natural consequence of being born to a mother and father who had been victimized; parents who never had the chance to heal their own wounds.

Recently, through my own writing, I came to see how this pattern played out in my relationship with my own child. I wanted to be the hero in her life. It was, after all, the only role I ever really knew. In order to do that, I had to cast her as the victim. Sometimes I still do.

On Saturday, as I talked with friends about my writing and what it is revealing to me, I saw so clearly how my attempts to rescue Kat, to be her hero, have robbed her of the opportunity to make her own way, to be her own hero. I see her doing that now , despite me, and I realize that it is time to hang up my cape.

Day 58

A few days ago when I tried to transcribe the handwritten pages of my memoir, I was attacked by my inner demons. This is crap, the demons said, the ramblings of a novice hack. I was disturbed by just how vocal these demons had become and the impact they were having on my writing process.

I met for tea with some friends yesterday and shared my concerns. One of my friends asked me a question that opened a floodgate of emotion. I don't recall the exact phrasing, the specific words. It was something like: What do you hope to accomplish with your memoir? Or maybe it was: What is your purpose in writing the memoir? I really don't recall.

What I do recall are the raw, honest internal responses that the question generated. The answers came fast and sharp: I want the memoir to heal me. I want it to heal my daughter. I want it to be published and heal millions of other people. I want it to generate cash from its publication, cash that will bring even more healing to my family.

The eyes of my friends were upon me and I didn't want to speak. I was embarrassed to admit my expectations. I suddenly recognized how silly my fantasies would seem if I spoke them out loud. Realizing that they were nothing more than fantasies, I was ashamed that I had allowed myself to be swept away by them. My memoir was still in the womb and I was already weaving dreams of the ways it would give my life meaning and purpose.

Writing a memoir is a lot like excavating the family grave site. Each bone, each artifact that you uncover carries of legacy of loss and separation. The process is marked by layer upon layer of grief. I guess that in the midst of that pain, I wanted to believe that there would be some sort of reward at the end of the dig, a prize in the form of healing.

I woke this morning feeling dazed and still hungry for healing. Even before my first cup of tea, I scanned Facebook. I was intrigued by a link posted by my Mom. It was the video of a young man named Zac Smith just before his death from cancer at the age of 33. He talked about his desire to live to walk his daughter down the aisle and grow old with his wife. Then he said: "If God chooses to heal me, then God is God and God is good. If God chooses not to heal me and allows me to die, then God is still God and God is still good."

Astounded by his faith I thought about my own. I am not sure what God is. God, for me, is a mystery. I am certain of only one thing: there is a still, small voice that speaks to me. I don't know where it comes from but I know I have to listen and follow. Right now that voice says: WRITE! What becomes of what I write is not my concern. It is none of my business. I am not in control here. I am not God.

Day 57

When I was 5 years old we lived in the projects. A place called Hocker Heights on the outskirts of Kansas City. I was sitting on the stairs talking to my Mrs. Beasley doll when one of the kids came stomping down from above. He carried a whole stack of pie tins, the kind that come from the grocery store with frozen pies inside, only these were empty. That didn't diminish his enthusiasm. He stomped out into one of the many mud puddles that substituted for a yard. He plopped himself down and announced, "I'm making mud pies!"

Soon there was a small crowd of kids: some were making pies, some were selling pies, still others were buying the pies to take home to their make believe children. All of them were covered from head to toe with mud. I was fascinated and repulsed as I watched from me seat on the stairs. I had no intention of soiling myself. Looking down at my pristine red dress, my brilliantly white ankle socks and my polished Mary Janes, I felt superior.

For me, cleanliness wasn't just an empty virtue. It was the thing that set me apart from my poor neighbors. It was the difference between poor and poor white trash.

Day 56

I was driving to Winco one day, not long after moving to Moscow. I had the radio tuned to KRFP, Radio Free Moscow. There were two women talking. Their laughter reminded me of tinkling wine glasses. One of them read a piece from SARK about the relationship between self-love and creative expression.

I became so immersed in the words that I had to pull my car off the road. I sat there on A Street watching the snow fall outside my window as I listened to these two women chat and giggle and read and revel in the joy of being together. I felt included, drawn into their circle of friendship.

It was perhaps a year later when I learned that one of the women on the radio was Leeanne, a new friend I made through my involvement with the Compassionate Communication Network of the Palouse. When I met her it was like being reunited with an old friend. Later I told her about how her voice on the radio months earlier had eased my loneliness.

Leeanne called me last night, bubbling over with enthusiasm, as she so often is. She had a proposition. She wants me to do a radio show with her. Something to help spread the message of nonviolent communication. We scheduled a time to get together to discuss ideas. My mind immediately started entertaining daydreams of a relationship advice show with a comedic format.

That is what the creative life is all about: Recognizing those moments of synchronicity that spark our imaginations and offer opportunities for creative self-expression; Allowing our minds to open to the possibilities; Removing the boundaries that normally keep us fenced in; Entertaining dreams and offering ourselves up to them. Creativity is a way of being in the world.

Day 55

A few months ago I started working on a memoir. It is focused on my relationship with my transgender daughter. I completed a few pieces, she read them and gave me her blessing to continue. Since then I have been writing everyday - three handwritten pages.

Recently, as I looked at the compiled pages, I started to feel overwhelmed. Clearly, transcribing and editing all those pages would be time-consuming and difficult. A writer friend suggested that I focus first on transferring the material from the page to the computer. She suggested that I avoid any major edits or rewrites until I am finished with the entire memoir.

I sat down at the computer yesterday with every intention of following her advice. I read the first line. It just wasn't right. I tweaked a few words to improve the flow. By the middle of the first paragraph, I began to find holes in the narrative. Surely it wouldn't hurt to fill in the blanks. By the end of the second paragraph I was rearranging words, adding clarifying statements and sharpening descriptions. I was in full editor mode.

I rationalized my behavior. The transcript was totally unacceptable in its original form. Transcribing it without major edits was like moving a box of junk from an old residence to a new one. Yes, we've all done it, but its inefficient, illogical. Doesn't it make more sense to sort through the box and throw out the garbage before you move?

Then I realized the problem with my logic. When I read what I have written I can't tell the jewels from the junk. I am too attached. I was beginning to see the wisdom of my friend's advice. I need to leave my writing as it is until I have time to separate from it. Once I am a little more detached I can sort through the words and make rational decisions about which which ones stay and which ones go.

Day 54

Sometimes I think that life is just one big classroom. I have been enrolled in a self-study course called Self-Care 101 for about 6 years now. It all started when I lost my job. Losing a job is always painful, but I attached all kinds of other meaning to it that compounded my pain. I was hurt that those above me on the hierarchy (the parents) did not take care of me (the child). The lesson, for me, was that I have to learn to take care of myself.

Around the time I lost my job I put on a lot of weight and I developed debilitating allergies. For years, I have been seeking help to deal with these issues. I have been to therapists and doctors, I even went to a medical intuitive who sold me expensive supplements that did absolutely nothing to relieve my symptoms. In spite of all of the medical intervention I am still fat and full of mucus. I have known for a long time that the real issue is my addiction to sugar.

I think that giving up the sugar is my big test. I need to pass this test to graduate from the course in self-care. I need these credits to move on to the next course. Maybe the next course will be Success 101 or Freedom 105 or Fun 110. I won't know until I pass Self-Care 101.

Day 53

I enjoy Facebook in the way an anthropologist might enjoy studying the artifacts of a lost culture. Even as she participates, she is detached, an observer looking for clues that shed light on the habits and values of the people.

This morning I read an exchange between two people, one of whom I know: a friend and colleague from graduate school. The other person was an apparent family friend, praising her for her academic accomplishments and her intellectual prowess. My friend responded by saying that her mother and grandmother instilled in her a love of knowledge and that her accomplishments were an effort to do right by them.

The statement struck me as inauthentic. It was a sound bite, a rhetorical move, a discursive tent pole propping up a larger narrative. It reminded me of the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Little George could not tell a lie. Yet the story itself was a lie, concocted in service to a narrative, a narrative intended to bestow a honor upon a man and his nation.

I have always had this longing for something authentic. Even as I write these words I'm not sure what they mean. As a writer, if I decide to write about a pond, I can choose to peer at the surface and report only on my reflection or I can plunge my arm into the frigid water and feel around in the icy depths. I suppose that's what it means to me to be authentic; it means feeling around in the dark and telling the truth about the murky undertow.

Like my friend I just completed an advanced degree. It wasn't for me a quest for knowledge. It was a hiding place, a safe retreat from the world. I used to tell myself that I started college with a noble purpose: to support my family. But now, when I allow myself to go back, to slip inside the skin of the girl I was at 21, I realize that I wasn't running toward a life of scholarship, I was running away from my life as a wife and a mother. I had already failed at home, but school was a place where I could succeed, where I could be a winner; a place where I could put my shame aside for a few hours at a time.

I do not possess many gifts as a writer. I have never demonstrated the poetic sensibilities of Toni Morrison or Kim Barnes, nor am I a master storyteller with a genius imagination, like Steven King. My only gift is this longing for authenticity; this desire to tell the truth. For most of my life I have carried it like a burden. I am learning to treasure it now.

Day 52

Bill and I had this conversation yesterday about how to have more productive fights. It was actually a kind of post-mortem of a fight we had last week. This is dangerous business: like detonating a bomb. It's been lying there dormant for over a week, but, POW, it could explode at any moment if we cut the wrong wire or push the wrong button.

We recognized our pattern: Bill was in pain, he expressed his pain as anger, I heard accusations and blame, I was in pain, I expressed my pain as anger...and we were off, on a course to hell. In hindsight, it is easy to see what I could have done differently. When the pain first came up for me, I could have attended to it, given myself the empathy I needed, then I would have been in a better position to give Bill the empathy he needed. As it turned out I wasn't able to attend to Bill's needs or my own.

I find a similar pattern in my writing. I write about something from my past that touches a nerve. Suddenly I am flooded with feelings from the past, unresolved pain washes over me. The pain stands between me and the page. I have to attend to it before I am ready to go on. I have to give myself the empathy I need now, the empathy I needed then, the empathy I didn't even know I required.

This morning I was writing about a time when I had to take the steps to have someone I loved committed to a psychiatric facility. I was suddenly engulfed in shame, surrounded by a cloud of vaporise gas. When it happened I didn't have the time or energy or understanding to attend to those feelings. Now I do. I can put down my pen and let the tears flow. It is a chance to relive the past, treat the wounds and move on.

Day 51

Reading a memoir by Kim Barnes this morning I was stopped by this statement that I had to read twice and then again out loud to Bill:

Even now it scares me to understand how easily a soul may pass from one dimension of itself into another, as though the boundaries separating what we are and what we might become, given an infinite set of motivations and conditions, are little more than the line between waking and sleeping, between story, memory, dream.

The words are so beautiful. I want to say them over and over, feel them on my tongue, roll them around in my mind. They stir my soul in an uncommon way by speaking to the little deaths, the transitions, the rebirths that characterize every life. These words make me think about the way that my own story is punctuated; the imaginary breaks that separate one event from another.

Writing my own life history has caused to me consider how quickly a life can change. The pivotal moments stand out in stark contrast to the months or years of static contentment or resigned suffering. Looking back changes my perception about the future. I am certain that life can and does change in an instant. There are those events that cause us to define everything else as "before" and "after". We never see them coming. It is frightening and the only retreat is the present moment.

Day 50

Kat posted this message on Facebook on Wednesday: "So, just got back from the courthouse. All the paperwork is done, and I'll have my name change finalized this next Tuesday! Huzzah!"

I looked up Huzzah in the Urban Dictionary: The crazy English version of hurray; Used to express joy, encouragement, and triumph; Used primarily, it seems, in the middle ages. Even without the huzzah, I was pretty sure that the news from Kat was good.

She told me months ago that she intended to change her name. The one I assigned her at birth no longer fits. I suspect it never did. In the last year she has redefined herself in so many ways: the way she dresses, the way she expresses herself, the friends she associates with, the place she calls home, the school she goes to.

At Evergreen, she is part of the "queer" community: young people who refuse to be defined by conventional notions of gender and sex. I admire their boldness and envy their sense of unity. They are a community of resistance.

Yesterday morning I reread her Facebook post. I was imagining her trip to the courthouse. She was no doubt accompanied by a ragtag band of nonconformists, there to support her because she is one of them. Even with their support, it must have taken real courage to hand over the paperwork and stand in her truth in front of a judge and all the world.

I was thinking about Kat and her courage when I went to get my hair cut and colored yesterday afternoon. As the hairdresser draped me in a cape, I declared, "I want to do something different, something bold."

"Oh," she said, looking surprised, "What were you thinking? Black? Red? How about an asymmetrical bob?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that." I was backpedaling now, looking for an exit. "How about blonder highlights and a few more layers?"

Day 49

I have been talking with a friend about co-facilitating a writing workshop. The theme of the workshop was my idea and I was excited about it. At the same time, I see it as a distraction from my writing. I am starting to see a lot of things this way.

I made commitments to a number of projects a few months ago, just after graduating, when I felt a desperate need to answer the question: What now? I defined myself as a graduate student/doctoral candidate for five years. The dissertation consumed so much of my time and energy and focus for the last two years. A vacuum was created by its completion.

I was like a drug addict just out of rehab. I needed to fill the hours; to create a new vision for my life. I imagined myself as a mediator, or the director of an agency devoted to conflict resolution. I got a few plate spinning in that direction. I decided that I wanted to coordinate a community forum on bullying. Oh, good, there's another plate balancing precariously in the air. Yesterday when my friend asked if I wanted to co-facilitate this writing workshop that I had suggested earlier, I recognized it for what it was: just another plate to spin. These spinning plates all serve to distract me from the writing.

I don't fully understand it, but I know that I need to write. I am afraid of that calling: it seems so primal and unrestrained. With all of these plates spinning there is little time to attend to it. My fears are abated. But always there is this tension between the fear and the calling. I am being pulled in opposite directions. Another option is to tend to the fears. What is it about fully devoting myself to the writing that so frightens me?

I heard a story on the radio a few months ago about Zora Neale Hurston author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. A well educated woman who continued to write throughout her life, she died alone and in poverty. It was only after her death that she was recognized as one of the greatest African American writers of the twentieth century.

Zora Neale Hurston worked as a maid before she was admitted to the St Lucie County Welfare Home where she died and was buried in an unmarked grave. I think about her a lot. I wonder: Was she content? Did she have regrets? Did the writing bring her joy? And I ask myself: Am I willing to take the chance?

Day 48

I was grading papers yesterday when I decided to take a break. I turned on Oprah and saw her speaking with Iyanla Vanzant. It as this amazingly candid and raw discussion, like peaking through the curtains at a private moment between the two of them. They were rehashing events from a time eleven years ago when Iyanla was being mentored by Oprah. Ultimately, the relationship ended with Oprah feeling betrayed and Iyanla feeling rejected. I could relate to them both.

I was especially intrigued by one line uttered by Oprah in the course of the conversation. She said that she learned a long time ago that if someone doesn't want her, she is not going to allow herself to want them. Wow, where do I sign up for that course? I have been trying to learn that lesson for most of the last 46 years.

I have this image in my mind, a borrowed memory conveyed to me by my mom. I am a little girl, a baby really, no more than two or three years old. My arms are upstretched, toward my father who towers above me. I am pleading for him to hold me. He doesn't. He is too busy watching the rollar derby on the television, drinking his beer, eating a Spam sandwich he made for himself alone.

I went through the next 40 years with my arms upstretched, pleading: please see me, please hear me, please love me. My arms were upstretched to teachers as I waited for their approval in the form of gold stars and big fat red A's. My arms were upstretched to the boys who would whisper I love you in exchange for a piece of flesh. My arms were upstretched to the blood sisters for whom I would do anything as long as they promised to never leave. My arms were upstretched at job interviews and employee evaluations where the boss held my self-worth hostage for a ransom of absolute compliance.

That is why I find it so astonishing now to hear a woman utter these words: If someone doesn't want me, I am not going to allow myself to want them. I want to speak these words myself, with conviction and heart. I am on my way, but I am not there yet. I still find my arms rising up as if by rote at the first sign of indifference or rejection. I am trying to learn to feel the fear and move through it without reacting in this way that has become so familiar.

The writing is where my heart is right now. I don't want to sacrifice it to this need to belong, to be accepted, to be loved and yet I see that danger. The writing can become just another way of holding my arms up, another plea for affection and understanding. Somehow I think that it can and should be more than that. I long to write not from a place of desperation, but from a place of grace.

Day 47

I just started working with graduate students a few months ago and they are already teaching me so much. I am a mentor to students engaged in the dissertation process: a process of research and writing. I sometimes receive messages from frantic students


Yesterday, I received five urgent pleas from the same student. She is trying to figure out how to organize her lit review. She was drowning in data. I could see her flailing around in ideas, her panic pulling her under. My instinct was to reach for her immediately, but I knew that I could be pulled under as well. Instead, I waited on the shore until I found the life ring.


I was putting peanut butter on my toast this morning when the answer came to me. I heard it clear as a bell. Her problem is not how to organize the lit review. Her problem is one of focus. She is not focused because she had not yet clearly articulated the research questions. The research questions drive the whole project. If they are not sufficiently developed, the project cannot move forward.

She has already written a prospectus; the research questions are embedded there. But she doesn't see them. She is lost among the trees. My job is to help her take a step back so that she can get a full view of the forest. I sometimes have the same problem with my own writing. I need to pull back and get an aerial.

If you are lost in the woods, you must avoid the urge to panic. That's what they taught us in Girl Scouts and it's good advice for writers, as well. They also taught us to stay put and wait to be found. Pull up a log, build a fire and listen. That's what I try to do. Maybe if I'm lucky I have a radio with me. Playing on the radio is the Beatles song, Let It Be:

Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Yeah, there will be an answer let it be

Day 46

It has been 46 days since I started this quest for a more creative life. Since the beginning, my mind has been crowded with religious imagery. The pictures in my head are like postcards from the past that mark my spiritual journey.

Today the image is of my 24 year old self, kneeling beside my bed, my hands clasped in prayer, pleading with God for an answer. I was failing at my job: my first job out of college, the job that was supposed to prove that college wasn't a waste of time and money, the job I needed to support my family, the job that I needed to prove my self worth. I wasn't connecting with my clients and I challenged my boss so often she threatened to fire me.

I can see myself so clearly: tears streaming down my face, desperation in my voice as I whispered: "Please God help me." It was in this moment when I was resigned, when I had all but given up, that I was given an answer so complete and perfect that I was certain it was divinely inspired.

I saw myself in a new job, working with a different set of clients, creating programs that would shine a positive light on my boss and our agency. The next day I went into my boss's office and shut the door. I told her about the job I envisioned for myself. I was used to encountering resistance from her, but on this day her eyes smiled and she nodded and I knew that we were going to make this vision a reality.

On that day, over 20 years ago, I felt touched by the hand of The Creator. Looking back I can see that I invited this intervention by putting my ego aside. I was completely defeated and absolutely certain that I did not have the answers. Usually the ego stands like a big totem obscuring my view of the divine. But on this day the totem was reduced to a pile of wood shavings. I was completely open. When the idea came to me, I trusted it. How often do I turn away from inspiration because it comes clothed as the absurd, like Harvey's Rabbit? Finally, I did something that I have seldom had the courage to do since. I shared my vision with someone else. I put it out there in the world and made it real. I suppose I was aided in part by the naivety of youth.

I sometimes think that I stumbled on a magic formula that night in my bedroom as I bowed my head in prayer, a recipe for transforming inspiration: one part humility, two parts faith, mixed with a dash of audacity.

Day 45

I grew in a city that some people refer to as the "buckle of the bible belt." Church buses prowled my neighborhood on Sunday mornings looking for young converts. The old school bus I rode to the Baptist church was painted white. On the side in red script were the words: Jesus Loves the Little Children.

I loved the charismatic preacher who mounted the podium each week. He was kind and funny, but also stern and sincere. His pretty wife and two children sat in the front row. He would smile down at them before he began to speak. I imagined what it would be like to be his daughter.

He said that we were all children of God and I believed him. Of course there are times, he said, when the devil leads us astray. These were my favorite sermons. He would get red in the face as he told us stories about the men and women of the bible who had fallen from grace. Backsliders. That's what he called them. I loved the sound of that word.

It's the word that came to mind this morning as I was thinking about the journey I began on January 1. I made a commitment to the creative life. It is February 14th and I am already a backslider. I suppose it is the sin of sloth that I am most guilty of. I am avoiding the work. My accurately, I have allowed other activities to come between me and the work I feel called to do.

The writing has taken a backseat to other "obligations." Instead of treating the writing as something sacred, it gets relegated to a place on my to-do list between grocery shopping and email. Writing requires time and space and a mind that is expansive and free. My mind has been cluttered and frantic, crowded by the encroaching needs and demands of others.

I saw a documentary a few days ago about Charles Schultz. He was described by many as private, isolated, stoic. It was as if he was encased in a bubble where he lived with his beloved Peanuts characters. He retreated from the world to live there with them. Perhaps that is what the creative life requires.

Day 44

A few years ago I went to a nonviolent communication workshop. Kathleen, the facilitator, volunteered in a prison project, teaching the men there nonviolent communication. She talked about what it was like to work with child molesters and murderers.

Through her work she had come to see that these men were not monsters. They didn't set out to hurt anyone. They were in need of human connection and empathy just like the rest of us. She talked about the way that most had been victimized themselves at some point in their lives. And then she said the thing I will never forget. She said, "Some of them never feel fully understood until that moment when they look into the eyes of their victim."

She answered a question that had plagued me since childhood: Why do we hurt each other? And she answered it in a way that maintained a basic belief that I had clung to since childhood, the belief that human beings are basically good. I never believed evil to be a sufficient explanation for the pain and suffering in the world.

The stories I love best are stories about pain and suffering and the redemptive power of empathy, understanding and love. Wally Lamb writes them. Tracy Chapman sings them. We all live them. These are the stories I most want to tell.