Yesterday's storm left us without power until late evening.  By now we know what to do: the Coleman lantern came out of storage in early Fall, its' batteries checked and back-ups bought, ready in the battery drawer; candles are lined up on their shelf in the laundry room ready to set out; and we are duly trained not to open the refrigerator - which will be covered in a blanket should the outage last more than 6 or 7 hours.   With a gas stove and no longer on a well, we are, at worst, inconvenienced by a power outage (although in really cold weather I long for a wood stove!)  When the smoke detector shrieked and the dog barked hysterically at 9:30 pm as the power re-engaged, we were already snuggled in our beds, sleeping, or reading with the book-light crucial to compulsive readers living in rural settings.

It is so clear that there is little else one can do in the dark when your electricity-dependent home is suddenly cut off from the source.  Oh, we could light kerosene lanterns, but for short term outages it is not worth the smell and residue. It took me years, though, to not feel that rush of  "I've got to fix this Now" energy that comes with an interruption of the norm. 

Reality is just that.  Here I am in the dark, perhaps not by choice but in the dark nonetheless.  I can light candles and lanterns, but the dark is still there.  And even when the electricity is functioning, still there is dark outside my little world of seeming control. 

Now and again I remember this: I make plans to sit quietly in the dark for a few moments every night, to test my existence perhaps, or ponder something beyond routine.  To allow the dark to speak to me however it will. 

But I forget, or fall asleep.  And the dark continues to be, as does the day, as do I. 

One of the things I like most about gardening is the infinite possibility for resurrection.  So I didn't pick the last flush of green beans in time....oh well, there's always next year!  Hmmm..the Artemesia overwhelming that lovely short Mullein*?....let's see, which will I move or can I divide!  Never got around to thinning this or re-potting that: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.  In the meantime, they all flourish or hunker or even languish and it still looks like garden, flowers still bloom, and if all else fails the Rose Campion seeds itself about, cheerfully blooming somewhere, no matter what!

Today is a sunny October day, cool but bright.  Rain is due later this week, which is actually good.  A few shrubs are beginning to turn, and I am watching the progress of bulbs I bought on sale early this summer. They have grown into marvelous spires with smallish purple-throated white flowers...surely I'll find the package with the plant's name sometime before spring, and devise an even better spot for them!

Our bird population is dwindling somewhat, but the nut hatches will stay I'm sure.  The jays will keep everyone but themselves in line all winter.   This year I know I'll be more conscientious about a feeding station!

On a day like today, all is possible.  A good thing to remember!

*Verbascum 'Jackie' - a short perennial mullein that blooms a lovely muted apricot flower continuously from spring all the way to now.  This is its second year despite general neglect.  I must look for more!



 

I don't know who first depicted depression as a "Sea of Despond"; I imagine the seemingly endless breadth and depth of depressed mood felt to them as uncontrollable as the ocean, as implicitly capable of great and possibly irreparable harm if conditions were right.  In the past few years we have learned the truth of this as tsunami's arise from the beautiful sea and wreak devastation.  Whoever coined this phrase, it is indeed apt.

In the book, "For The Journey" a main character writes of depression: "For some it was a matter of a life-long sense of unworthiness that sometimes leveled off to a background noise they could ignore, and other times rose up and demanded attention.  For others, depression itself was the earth they walked on, a ground spread with hidden trapdoors that might drop open at any time revealing, too late, an endless pit into which they were bound to plummet."

Over my thirty-plus years in the mental health treatment field, opportunities to sit with others who are experiencing, and overcoming, depression have been many.  Because many years of my own youth and young adulthood were spent struggling unaware with depression, the work was and is gratifying.

So it is, with some amusement and chagrin, that I post this to myself:  Take note! The "Pond of Morose" can be a tricky precursor to the "Sea of Despond."  An ocean of swirling beauty and color recently experienced as joyful connection with "All-That-Is" can, with a mere turn of mind, become a frighteningly unknowable void in which fears lurk and indecision paralyzes. 

It took some days for me to recognize the drift: to be reminded of how easily a dip in physical well-being can translate to a downturn in mood.  The pond is somewhat warm, comfortable, the silt not too deep.  And then it is.

Happily, I know exactly what to do.  And am emboldened to write it out, and post the directions soon.

Muskrat reminder:  Water, Earth, Air....all necessary for existence.

"Did you feel pain or recall anything of the surgery?" asked the chipper anaesthesiolgist, leaning over my recovery room bed.

"No, I was at the beach," I answered, newly conscious.

To be exact, I was the beach, the Pacific Ocean, curving, roiling, rushing up the sand, every watery molecule aware, a living motion of waves gathering, building, emerging, breaking, rushing, pausing, retreating, re-joining the immense eternal whole.

Pale yellows and deeper golds reflect the sun, superimposed on a base blue-grey like underpainting in an Impressionist's summer seascape.  The colors mix and roil, pulse and change.  And the Pinks! the palest rose blushed across froth, pink reflected in the glass-clear liliputian parts of water shining out, ecstatic in its waterness, serene in a tenderness of hue.

As my son and I sat in the surgery waiting room earlier that day, chatting with equally nervous and hungry neignbors, an exuberant fellow across from us shared the experiences of his own cancer and treatment -- now a year past --a far more complex and intense affair than I am led to expect.

"It was hard," he said.  "It changed my life.  I am not the same."  He smiled at us, offering any help he could give, encouragement for the journey, apparent satisfaction in the change.

"I am not the same," my dear neighbor and friend has told me, another cancer survivor.  It is clear her experience was frightening, a trauma played out in a foreign land, and yet a gift came out of it.  "I will never be the same," she says, and hearing her, watching her face as the words form and are spoken, it is apparent she means this in the most positive way----a precious secret, shared with an initiate.

Now, days later, I am decidedly on the mend.  Yesterday I was impatient to get about my business but not yet ready..habit preceding its time.  Today I am more myself:  intent and action nearer to congruence. 

I hold the memory of water close, the feeling of color, the perfect unfolding of a cresting wave.  I hope to remember.

Oh Muskrat, you are a tricky one!

Sundays are unique. For some, of course, it is the day to attend a worship service, to set aside customary morning routines and redefine focus and attention. For others it is the day that starts late, the day that is for rest, for a leisurely read of the newspaper, for poking about in some pursuit not intent on outcome.

Growing up, Sundays were for church attendance. In the afternoon a large and leisurely dinner was served and it wasn't until evening that the tedious requirements of daily life pressed in (well, bickering with my sister over dish-washing duties notwithstanding).

Although I no longer attend church services, Sundays continue to be holy for me. When I finish this post I will go out and run the weed-eater, disrupting the quiet in my neighborhood, upsetting the Sunday smooth curve of late summer's mid-day air. But when I am done the rift will close, the air will reform into its unbroken quiet path across our forested suburban countryside. The Sunday-ness of the world will have been just slightly disturbed by me, the wholeness of it intact.

I don't know what makes Sundays so unique: is it the inhabited quiet, the collective knowledge that it is a day outside routine, the unhidden secret of time stolen from our usual pursuits, the reverberation of innumberable lifetimes identifying this day as different?

I imagine that were I the Dalai Lama or some other Enlightened Being a sense of unremarkable holiness would be evident every day. It will have to be sufficient for now that it is this day, today, that feels holy to me. Tomorrow will have to fend for itself.

The first day of school is imminent: my resident grandson is entering his high school sophomore year. If I were a muskrat my grandchildren would be virtually uncountable (assuming muskrats can enumerate). Mother muskrats produce approximately six babies twice per year. Even given the dangers of the woodland, brush and stream, that means a lot of progeny! Their cozy burrows--reached like beaver dens from underwater portals--must get very crowded, requiring early emancipation for sheer survival's sake.

I, on the other hand, have slacked off with only three children and five grandchildren, the youngest mentioned above. Each of them is precious beyond speaking. When I think of the various and varied activities undertaken these seventy years, my children and grandchildren are paramount. Whether I see or hear or hold or even know them is irrelevant. The cord that binds me to each of them is made up of too many strands to ever break. They are irrevocably part of me.

Cancer (the illness) has become a societal catch-word for mortality. Yeah, yeah, we're all mortal, and so what. But cancer...now there's some serious mortality! It's a word, when applied to oneself, that puts muscle into the phrase "live each day as if it were your last." Even if it's clear that the cancer in your own person is not going to be your particular cause of death. In that sense, cancer is indeed a gift. "Living in the moment" (with appropriate regard for paying the light bill, showing up for your chemotherapy, etc.) is certainly preferable to worrying the past and second-guessing the future.

This moment: warm smile thinking of progeny, friends, relations, and the hundreds of people who have tenderly shared their lives with me in my therapy office.

Next moment: oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar. Num.

Some evenings ago driving home from my last client of the day, an odd apparition appeared. It was dark out and I was on the last leg of the drive, just past the fish farm. In the middle of the headlight-illuminated road stood what looked to be a long-legged rat wearing overshoes, its stretch-nosed face turned up toward me with a pleasant if inquisitive expression. When I mentioned the odd sighting to a friend who was visiting, he said it was a muskrat. Perhaps, I said vaguely, my mind worrying at the schedule of doctor's appointments ahead of me and the unknowns they represented.

A week later..appointments met, surgery scheduled, preliminaries arranged, information gleaned...I have sulked my way through a spot of resistance, pulled up my metaphorical socks, and pronounced myself ready to embark on this journey called surviving breast cancer. I have no doubt at all that I will survive it. There may be surprises and unpleasantness along the way, but the current news is positive.

I write as a poster-woman for regular mammograms performed by top-notch professionals at a central medical center. Because my primary care provider prods me annually, I have been compliant if dismissive. No one in my family has ever had breast cancer. My expectation of ever encountering it personally was less than zero. But I was wrong.

So I am pondering that muskrat and considering its news. S/he is "Wazhushk" in the Ojibway language, spelled Wajashk by extended relatives I once visited on their northern Ontario Reserve. They named their Fish Camp and cabins Wajashk, to honor muskrat. The cabins are trim and painted yellow, and sit alongside the beautifully turbulent French river.

Muskrat is critical to the Anishnabeg, for she dove through the seemingly bottomless waters and retrieved soil crucial for First Woman to begin life on this turtleback world. Wajashk was the least of the water creatures, expected to fail, but she did not. Without Wajashk life would not have taken hold on Turtle's back, and we would not be.

So also, perhaps, is Muskrat critical to my new world. Perhaps this musing is the start of my own "Muskrat News"...notes of an unexpected journey begun as I step into my seventieth year confronted with cancer. What could be better than that!