The P Bomb.

 I rely on my body to be all the things that my brain cannot: 

strong,

reliable,

resilient.

capable.

Able.

This year, however, my brain and body have entered into something of a... detente? easy camaraderie? unsettling partnership?  In short- they are in lock step: each injured, abused, spiraling.  Each failing in their own ways.  Both sets of failures escalating the assault on whatever thin bit of well being I have left.  

This year has been hard- unforgiving and unrelenting.  Injury after injury after injury have challenged both my commitment to running and my desire to.  Which has felt like insult to my actual soul.  Running- as much as writing or dwelling, traveling or photographing- has been such a part of me.  Such a great part of me:

my coping mechanism,

my mental and physical retreat,

my time,

my recollection,

my quiet sanity,

my silence,

my space.

To not have all that, to have lost all that, has been... my grief.  

I am tired of being in pain.  I am so so tired of pain- mental and physical.  I am tired of feeling out of time and space and self.  Tired of discomfort and not feeling like myself.  Tired of not knowing what that self is- 

or was,

or will be.

Tired of feeling like I have been tried and found wanting.  Tired of not knowing when my changing body, brain, hormones, will quit.  Will leave me alone.  Will allow me again a sense rest and peace and pace.  

I. Am. Tired. 

I. Am. A. Runner.

I am a runner.  

There- I said it... wrote it.  

I am not an athlete, I don't do it for a living.  I am not an Olympian- I'm not even that fast.  Not really.  But I am a runner.  

I am.  

I have been thinking about this a lot lately- because running does take its toll.  It asks a lot- 

But then so do I. 

We recently returned from a trip to France during which- no surprise- I ran.  Along country roads and some dirt tracks, through fragrant fields, I ran.  And it felt good.  Which came as something of a surprise given that just days before we left on holiday, I had landed in the urgent care with a shocking inability to get oxygen into my system.  

What I am calling 'Petite' Long Covid is a bitch.  

Me: post-Covid, post-road race, pre-Petit 
Long Covid.

A chest x-ray, some poking and prodding, and a forgotten corticosteroid inhaler later, we were off, angling to the north and an idyllic retreat with dear friends.  The drive was long and lovely but roughed up my already aching back.  (Context- before moving overseas I was delivered a diagnosis of trauma-induced scoliosis.  We need not meander down that road.  Suffice to say, my back hurts.  A lot and chronically). 

Still I ran. (Still I run).

As I ran loops around our friends' property, trying to make up my mileage, I noticed my times returning to their pre-Covid numbers.  I noticed my legs screamed less for air and a break  My body drank the country air and my being flew with it. 

--

I have asked so much of this body.  So much.  Both as a runner and as a human.  I have asked it to run and keep running through flus and RSVs and pneumonia and Covid; through pulls and sprains and strains.  Through rain and wind and chill and hot hot heat.  Through it all. 

I have asked it to bear a child, then to grow the potential for more children.  Then to bear again the pain of losing them. 

I have asked it to survive when I could not sustain it.  

I have asked it to come back over and over and over- to fight for itself physically when I could not do it mentally.     

And every single time- it has shown up. 

While I may have my issues with the human race in general, I have always found the human body t be the most incredible machine.  It takes what you give and gives back so much more.  And it shows up until it can't.  It's a beautiful, incredible machine.  Even mine- broken and abused as it is- even mine is a beautiful incredible machine.  

A machine that runs.  

Twofer: The Other Mothers and Drive-by Goodbye

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about tribes.  

Well, I've been thinking a lot about a lot of things lately.  I am, we are, moving at the end of the month.  To another house, another city, another country.  A place for which I have so much hope... but also some trepidation... and certainly no tribe.  At least not yet.  

Tribes don't happen overnight.  

Nor do friends, nor families- neither the ones we make nor the ones we chose.  

Over a lifetime I have cultivated a few precious connections that mean very much to me.  People and relationships without whom or which I would have floundered, drowned in my own head.  For this Mother's Day, I thought I'd shout a few of those out.  

Without further ado:

My (Mom) Tribe- 

To the Irish mum who knew me long before either one of us were mums- I cannot wait to see you.  Thank you for the countless glasses of wine we've shared.  Thank you for the countless hours of conversation; the countless hugs, the tears, more hugs, and deep love.  Thank you for yelling at me.  Thank you for caring enough to yell at me.  I literally cannot wait to see you.  

To the mom who is always up for a run (when schedules, husbands, and sons allow it)- you are an invaluable gem.  The miles of sweating, bitching, laughing, commiserating and planning have kept me saner than you can possibly imagine.  The stolen 20 minutes here, an hour there, have indeed kept me sane. 

To the moms who have littles who I've yet to meet- I am eager and terribly excited to meet them and laugh with you and reconnect and marvel at these little kingdoms we are building.  We are actually the architects of chaos.  

To the mom two doors down- just two doors down?  If only you knew how many times you have carried me from just there... or from across the ocean.  You have been the hand at my back, my prop, my sounding board on more occasions than I can name.  More than that, you have shared your family with mine.  You have put up with my dogs, my baking, my apparently endless chatter.  You are my hero.  

To the mom I don't really know yet but who I know I want to know so much better... if that makes any sense at all.  You are my impromptu, unexpected training buddy at a time when I didn't know I needed one but absolutely wanted one.  You are the person that my husband recently identified as "oh- she's just like you."  

To the moms from whom I've drifted- we've drifted.  And the moms I don't know as well as I should... the moms I nod or wave to; the moms who make plans that never really pan out (mostly for me, mostly because I'm a homebody, mostly because having a baby and a husband with stage four cancer during a pandemic left deeper scars than I casually reveal)... you're still on my mind.  

Happy Mother's Day to the lot of you.  And to all the other mothers out there.  The work of motherhood is tough and oftentimes feels lonely and obsolete.  You are neither alone nor obsolete.  I see you, I feel you, I hear you, I am you.  

And to my own mom- the original matriarch of the tribe- and to the grand- great grand- great great grand, etc. mothers who came before.  You are all a part of me.  You are all a part of us.  Who we, as young (or maybe not so young) mothers, are is tied to who you, as hardened vets, were.  Who I am as a person, a woman, a mother, is intrinsically tied to my mom.  Who raised her, how she was raised, how they were raised and so on and so forth.  Because that is the thing about tribes.  They go back and forth- backward in time and forward with the inevitable passing of one season to the next.    

And there you go- and there we go-

I am notoriously bad at goodbyes.  I will make jokes until the bitter end and then hide in the bathroom so I can cry quietly. Or sob without guile or care for puffy eyes, snot, or stuttered breathing.  Keep that in mind over the next few weeks.  To those with whom I am parting, my heart hurts and aches to take you with me onto more and more adventures.  To those with whom I am meeting, you bring me peace and anticipation and a sense of rightness.  

Here's to all of you, all of us, all the days behind us and all of those ahead.  

Here's to it all.  

Tchau. 

Xx. 

Blindspot.

Despite the fact that most of the people who read this blog know me, I tend to treat it as an anonymous airing of the soul.  I pretend that people who know me won't read the posts; I pretend that people who don't know me will stumble upon it and it will light their spirits to know they are a little less alone.  

I pretend that for most I am a blindspot.  

This sounding board I have created over many years and many many many trials has allowed me to vent my frustrations- my anger, my willfulness, my sadness, my disease, my perpetual longing for something just beyond my reach- in the best way I can.  

Silence.  

That is what I love most about writing, I think.  It is a silent venture- save for the scratch of pen or pencil against paper or the staccato clack-clack-clackity-clack of keys depressed one the keyboard.  I can stretch into my words, my sagas, quietly- pursed lips and squinted eyes.  I can explode, implode, scream, retch, laugh, cry, delete delete delete delete all without uttering a single word out loud.  It is... I don't know if I can explain it... 

I have had a lovely holiday season.  I have.  But for several long months I have felt like- I missing something or someone.  I am missing the sounding board.  The person or persons I would turn to vent or lash out my feelings out loud.  Out.  Loud.  It's been ages since I've talked to my husband about what I'm feeling about myself.  And while that seems... well however it seems, it frequently feels wrong to burden him with my ongoing dementedness while we navigate his ongoing waltz with cancer.  And in a way I have become so reclusive with my feelings, so guarded with my internal struggles that I have stopped relying on others to help.  

Not that I was ever particularly good at that anyway.  

What's more, the circularity of it all tends to drive me further and further from opening up.  Because I am struggling; because I haven't sought professional help even though it is the most reasonable way of moving forward; because I know myself.  I know myself.  

I have sat with myself for so long, so long, distant and reflective and always always at odds.  I have shared the burden to a degree but kept a great deal of it to myself like some sort of metaphysical or psychic hoarder.  I ache to tell but I yearn to hold fast.  To stay the course. 

To survive.  

But survival is a lonely thing. 

Growl- or Dry Drowning, Part 2.

For the past few months, I have laid low.  Very low.  I have barely spoken to anyone outside of my immediate family and have probably spoken the most to my three year old.  

He's quite the conversationalist.  

But I haven't just laid low, I have been low.  Very low.  I have been antsy and angry and felt complicit and uncomfortable and subtly anguished.  Desperate.  My illness is, pardon the pun, eating me alive.  My self doubt and loathing batter at my doors with disquieting strength.  Some days are better than others, some days are worse.  Most days I find joy in my boy.. but otherwise these past few months have seen a quiet disregard for myself and a pained, if inevitable, leaning back into grief. 

Hours before we received the news
I stared in delighted awe at all 
these hopeful ribbons tied 
to a bridge in Aveiro, Portugal. 

A little over a year ago, I went through the initial phases of IVF treatment.*  I took the antibiotics, gave myself the shots, braced myself for all the things.**  All the emotions and hormones and feelings and feelings of tentative hope and wild fear and failing and failure.  Neither myself nor my husband have a fertility problem.  No- we have a cancer issue.  I have written about it previously and don't feel the need to dip back into that.  Suffice to remind- my husband carries a genetic mutation on his TP53 gene.  It is not a guarantee that he will get cancer- but it is basically a guarantee that he will get cancer (and he has).  And it is autosomal dominant- any offspring he has will have a 50-50 chance of also having this mutation.  Again- see previous posts, but the worst two weeks of my life were waiting to find out whether our baby had gotten it.  

We lucked out with him.  

We wouldn't take the chance with number two.  

You see, we could hedge our bets a little this time.  With E, while I was pregnant, we had no idea that Steve had this mutation (chalked his astrocytoma up to bad luck, hey).  We had no idea that our little creature could be in some sort of genetic danger.  No idea he could or would be tested.  But after we found out, after at very long length we decided to grow our family one more time, we made sure to throw the kitchen sink at this damned gene.  This awful thing.  

And so we devised a plan.  

I would go through IVF- what embryos were successfully fertilized would be sent to a genetics testing lab where they would be carefully combed over for any signs of TP53 or BRCA2 (Steve has both).  The healthiest would be implanted, a much wanted pregnancy would ensue and ta-da! baby number 2.  The first two, we checked off the list.  Then we took our family of three to Portugal for a holiday and a little more rekky while we waited for the genetics lab to do its thing.  

Of the 13 eggs they harvested, 11 were viable.  Of those 11, seven were then successfully fertilized.  Of those seven, only three were sent to be tested.  

All three had the genetic mutation.  All three had the cancer gene.  None would be implanted.  None would be grown and delivered and held.  Three little faces I would never see.  Three people, three individuals I would never have the privilege to meet and know and love.  Three babies lost at once.  

I fractured.  Into a million pieces I fractured.  In that moment, and so many of the moments afterward, I felt such anger, such hatred.  I was angry at my husband- I hated his genes.  I was angry at the fertility clinic and the genetics lab and everyone involved in my treatment from top to bottom.  And I hated myself.  I blamed myself.  

And I mourned.  I mourned for those three babies.  I mourned for our family.  I mourned for myself.  I had not told many people what Steve and I were doing, what we were planning on doing.  And so I did not tell many people about the results.  

About the aftermath. 

In the very quiet moments, silent with my grief, I felt alone in a way that I had not felt since the worst of my worst relapse.  I felt alone in a way that I still cannot describe.  I felt sadness that I cannot describe.  Not adequately.  Never adequately.   

So here I am a year later.  A lot has happened.  A lot, actually, has happened.  Some of it means something, most of it means we are alive and moving forward- which is a different sort of something.  But here I have been so low.  And it took me a while to pinpoint it- 

Not long after the news.
He was- and is the best balm 
for heartache.

I am not over it.  Where I thought I had started to heal, to knit those three lost parts of my soul back together and back into myself... I am still not entirely- no, not entirely.  I am still not at all healed.  Not really.  I drop E off at his little school three days a week.  There are other parents- each with their own stories and sadnesses, their own trials- so many with a second or third or fourth baby on their hip.  There are other mothers, dancing with their littler ones while sending their little one off.  Or pregnant.  Or talking about pregnancy.  

My husband's disease is doing it's own thing.  My son is, as ever, North on my compass.  I am grateful for every second I have with them both.  (Well... E is going through the treacherous threes...).  And in my most vicious moments, it's not 'wanted' but 'want' to have another baby.  

The first question that people tend to ask after they find out all of the above is "well why don't you just do IVF again?"

That is not an option.  The emotional toll it took on me nearly broke my family.  

Adoption is an option but given the upcoming move to Portugal, there are a few kinks to work out.   

And Steve's cancer is back in a very real way.  And something he said to me the other day cut like a knife in a very real way.  He lives with the possibility that he is not going to see our child grow.  He lives with the weight of cancer relentlessly trying to drag him down.  We are his buoy.  But what would he do? think? feel? about leaving behind not just me and E- but me and E and another one?

And here we are.  Here we have been.  There we go.  

*I want to take just a heartbeat here to recognize every family who has had their own unique IVF journey.  Ours did not work out- some do not.  Some do.  To all of you who have been through it- good, bad, ongoing- I tip my hat.  Forever. 

**To be fair- my mom gave me a lot of the shots.  Steve was away and she spent her entire career as a pediatric nurse.  She is considerably more practiced at the art of the painless needle than I or anyone else I know. 

Keep the Things You Love. Carry the Things You Treasure.

My mom has this advice that she offers up from time to time- that everyone should have their house burn down at least once. 

Like- burn- all the way.  

To the ground.  

Total loss. 

She speaks from experience.  It happened to her as a young woman.  And to contextualize, had she been home at the time- had the fire sparked say at night- had she been in her bedroom, there is a good chance that neither she nor I would be here today.  So.  There's that.  

Her point is that things are just things.  Sure they have memories, and meanings to us as individuals, but ultimately..  things are just things.  What has so much more memory and meaning and value is life itself.  

Is her point. 

And I tend to agree (obviously) but with some nuance.  There are things that we all collect- knickknacks, keepsakes, things that make us happy in a moment.  Sometimes that happiness stays with us and sometimes it fades over time.  But these things, these objects on which we impart special status, help define who we are or were at a given moment.  They deserve us to pause a beat.  

Some things that came with me:
A camera that is not my workhorse but will 
be made into one. 
Cards from friends, written before we left, 
cherished instantly.

This is what I'm thinking about as a trans-Atlantic move becomes more and more real.  More and more... looming.  We are almost two weeks into our latest sojourn to our adopted homeland.  This trip will take us into the middle of July.  And when I packed, I packed things that I planned on leaving here.  Things that felt like they could make what is barely a familiar place into a homespace.  I packed toys that would make my son feel more comfortable.  I packed sweaters and slippers that would make me feel cocooned and cared for.  I packed weird things- thing I don't know that we will actually use here but will make us feel a little like we belong.  

As I was doing this, the prepacking, packing, and soon unpacking, I made round after round after round through our house.  You see- like so many, we have an entire household of things.  Some of these things predate myself, my husband, hell- some of these things predate my parents.  Some other things are new, fresh.  Some things open up wounds when I look at them, some other things are in the business of healing.  

I would find myself, some days, standing in the middle of the living room or bedroom or baby's room staring absently at nothing at all.

Because what do we take?  What, in this lifetime of things, makes the move?  

My mom is right, naturally.  We can live without all of it.  But life is so much more elegant with it.  And ultimately, that is how I approached this first round of movement.  (Or tenth or twentieth depending on how you keep score).  I love a lot of my things, and I will keep a lot of my things.   A lot of my things will get carefully packed and transported on a slow ship from Florida to Portugal.  A lot of my things will not. 

But the things I treasure- the cameras, the notes, the pair of UGGs that will house my feet a million more times- those things I carried with me.  They came on the plane, nestled between pages of books or, in the case of the camera, wrapped up in a pair of socks and jammed into my husband's carry-on.  They made the transit with me because I keep the things that I love, but I carry the things that I treasure. 

Mother's Day- or Junk Genetics and the Agony of the Wait.

I have been thinking a lot, lately, about motherhood- about parenthood I guess.  And here's the thing- mothering, parenting... it's hard.  It is the hardest thing you'll do for a while.  It is the one of the most wonderful and cruel and graceful and graceless seasons of your life that you can and cannot even begin to imagine.  It is not necessarily intuitive nor is it something you ease into.  It is full of love and laughter and indignities and so very many tears.  Tears from you, tears from your baby (or babies).  So very very many tears.  Happy, sad, snotty, sloppy, silent, grieving, giggling tears.  

Tears for years.  

And it seems inevitable (although not often discussed) that there are things you love and things you hate about it.  I hate spit.  I hate drool, spit, all the liquidy goo that is literally entrenched in infancy.  Cannot stand it, cannot handle it- I hate drool.  I can manage all the other yuck- but the drool kneecaps me every time.  Otherwise I love too much else to individually catalogue here.  I will say that I do love motherhood- even at its absolute worst, I love it.  More than I ever thought I could, actually.  I genuinely enjoy the person I am helping to raise.  

Oh yes, most of all I love my kid.

E and I on holiday, a few weeks before the blood draw.

I beyond love my kid. 

So buckle in.

When my son was 18 months old I drove him to the genetics lab at the Moffitt Cancer Center.  My husband, who had had some treatment or another that morning, was already there and met us.  What followed were the worst moments of my motherhood to date.  

We had just found out that my husband carried a mutation on his TP53 gene.  TP53 is supposed to function as a tumor suppressor.  It is supposed to regulate out of control cell growth and division (go ahead and Google cancer right here).  It is supposed to work.  It is supposed to protect our bodies from ourselves.  

In my husband it does none of these things.  

In my husband it has malfunctioned.  In my husband it has lead to something called Li-Fraumeni Syndrome.  The mutation and named syndrome basically mean that carriers have an increased chance of getting all manner of (particularly nasty) cancers at a much earlier age than normal.  If there were a textbook example of this, my husband would be it.  In his thirties he was diagnosed with, underwent surgery for, and eventually survived anaplastic astrocytoma.  This is one of those particularly nasty ones.  This is brain cancer.  He still goes yearly for MRIs and will never not take anti-seizure medication.  

Mid-pandemic, he was diagnosed with "aggressive" (we were never given a "stage") prostate cancer.  He was 49.  Nasty little bugger again- and very much on the young side of prostate issues.  We- he really- fought it and beat back the big C.  It was during this time that he entered a clinical trial at Moffitt.  One thing led to another... and we found out about the mutation.  That horrid, wretched mutation.  Which on its own is its own thing, but which is also autosomal dominant heritable.  Just fancy bio-terminology for 50-50.  

Because my husband has this mutation, there is a 50-50 chance that he passed the same mutation to our son.  The same mutation, the same syndrome, the same mind-numbing, heart-shattering increased odds of all cancers- even childhood, even the worst. 

It still makes me nauseous.  I can only imagine the weight of it that my husband carries. 

So one over-bright morning, we met at that genetics research building and listened for our son's name.  Then we sat in the lab and tried to stay calm as the nurses tried to find a vein in our son's arm (he was a little dehydrated).  Then we smiled as the nurses cooed over our child (he is disproportionately cute- as in, it makes no sense how my husband and I managed to produce such a gorgeous kid.  Like, no sense at all) and complimented us on his bravery.  Then we were discharged with a folder full of information we did not want and began the wait.  

My wild boy.
My great love.

Cue those worst moments.  The breath-stealing moments of trying to guess at genetics.  The raging, wrathful moments when I blamed my husband's junky genetics for a disease our child may or may not have -and diseases he may or may not get.  The crying-in-the-shower moments when I simply could not think of a future in which my beautiful, vibrant little boy might be given the most terrible sort of news.  The out-of-my-mind moments when I sat there filtering through decisions that we might have to make, steps we someday might have to take.  Some decisions you might agree with, some you might not.  

These are the moments that made up motherhood for two-and-a-half weeks in the fall of 2021.*

There is nothing on this planet so humbling than waiting.  Nothing.  Not one single thing can possibly induce the kind of impotence that accompanies an interminable wait.  Nothing that cuts to the core of you and dictates the madness and pain of it all. 

My son does not have the mutation.  There are those joyful tears again.  By some cosmic miracle, he has two normally functioning copies of the gene.  He is now three and some months.  He is wild and funny, smart as a whip and thoughtful and imaginative and interested in dragons, ice cream, and books books books.  He tells me that I am his best mommy and I melt into a puddle.  Every day is long and some days are hard but most days are Mother's Days around here. 

Oh- and my husband is now fighting cancer... again. 

F*ing genetics. 

*I know that this is a drop in the ocean for a lot of other mothers out there.  To you I send all of my love, faith, and belief in your strength as a mother, a woman, a human.  To you I tip my hat every minute of every day. 

I'm Only Going to Say This Once. Or Twice*

I have a deep and abiding and utterly irrational fear of kitchen tongs.  

Bear with me, it's been on my mind for a while....

I write this with all due gravitas, of course.  It is a very deep, very abiding, very irrational fear of kitchen tongs.  

And it is constantly on my mind.  Because I have a house.  Which has a kitchen.  Which has kitchen tongs.  I see them every day.  I open the 'tools' drawer and there they are, staring me down with their utterly pleasant completely benign blue and red tones.  Nestled between microplanes and meat thermometers, they hide until they don't.  Then they strike.

Don't judge my drawer.

I am at subtle war with kitchen tongs.  

Kitchen. 

Tongs.  

You see, when I took my yoga teacher training (YTT) about a million and a half years ago (okay, it is more like 15 but it feels like a million and a half) I almost cut the tip of my finger off.  I know, I know, I have occasionally been known to exaggerate but this is a far cry from exaggeration.  I still break into a cold sweat when I think about it.  That moment when I felt flesh separate from flesh.  When I stood at a sink full of soapy water and dirty dishes closed my eyes and thought if I just leave it in there, it's not really cut is it? 

But it really was.  And what's more, it was very nearly severed.  

Which I found out when one of the other trainees, a doctor, gently coaxed my hand from beneath the murky depths.  Of course my eyes remained closed (I do not do well with blood- particularly my own) but I felt the physicians tsk-tsk to my very soul.  "Well, that is not good," but with an Aussie accent.  Our ashram was too far away from the local urgent care to send me there and really, what would they do other than bandage it up?  So that's what he did.  

And as he did, he informed me that if I took the bandage off prematurely, before the top of my finger had knitted itself back on- because skin is so crazy- I would risk infection and loss of the tip altogether.  

Somehow, I did not vomit.  

So there you have it.  While cleaning it, I cut the tip of my finger off on a pair of kitchen tongs.  That's right- that feeling of flesh separating from flesh? was not from a paring knife of chefs knife or any other professionally sharpened utensil.  Oh no, it was the result of the dull inner lip of the tong and my own zeal for washing dishes.  

I almost cut the tip of my finger off with kitchen tongs and I literally cannot get over it.  

I have YTT-KT-PTSD.  

This is absurdity at its finest.  I fully admit that. 

And profundity in a way, too, I guess.  I mean, here are these lovely, largely harmless, completely commonplace cooking utensils and somehow they managed to change my actual fingerprint.  This thing that is unique and an identifying mechanism for an individual- completely altered.  I know this because I worked for the government for a time and had to be fingerprinted on several occasions.  Where one season my right index finger looked one way, the following season, it did not.  There was- is- a thick white line that now bisects the upper half inch or so of the offending digit.  I stare at it sometimes- mesmerized by it. I have tattoos- loads of them.  I have freckles and moles and scars in strange places.  I have a body that grew a baby, and it shows.  

But this one white line, this one sliver of stiff scar tissue just messed with my head.  

Clearly. 

*Solid chance I've said it thrice or more times.  Alas.  I have made a liar out of me. 

"Welcome."

A couple of days ago Facebook Memories kicked out a post that I made eight years ago (there's no getting around that double 'ago').  It was a photo of Henry, a photo of a stormy rainbow, and a long explanation of how- this is not a joke- we would be moving to Norway.  You see, I used to do things with some aplomb and not a little sense of drama.  

Scrolling to capture to the beauty...
and the bullshit. 

There are a few times throughout the year when my Memories just sucker punch me.  One of those times is now-ish.  The Easter/Spring holiday timeframe.  In Norway it usually heralded some sort of major (or minor) excursion for my husband and I.  One year it was Amsterdam, one year Wales.. another year it was Svalbard.  NATO would go quiet and we would escape. 

Since moving back to the States, things work a little differently.  Holidays are spent with us still- together and grateful- just differently.  Yet Facebook never fails to remind me that I have been places and done things.  

And that I was once a burgeoning Photographer (capital P).  

And that I could write.  

And that Wales remains the most perfect place on earth.*

But- as I am wont to do- I digress.  This moment in time that Facebook reminded me of felt a lot like a nudge.  A not-so-subtle shove back toward my own/old self.  Slinking away like a thief in the night has never been my MO.  Not really.  Yet here I am, eight years later, not really talking to anyone about the fact that we have started the process of relocating to Portugal.  Lawyers have been hired, documents sent back and forth.  And yet I don't talk about it.  I tell myself it is because nothing is firm yet, we don't have a house yet, we haven't filed for the visa yet. 

But we are going to.  We, my husband, son, and two impossible dogs, are going to firm things up.  We will find a house.  We will file the paperwork, in person at the consulate, and wait until they tell us "Bem-vindo".  

"Welcome." 

And then we will work hard at making our house a home, at creating a community, at discovering all the best places for gelato and the finest spots for fresh carrots and tomatoes.  We will welcome others and all.  We will create and be good and bad and happy and sad and feel everything and feel it on foreign soil.  Only it won't be foreign forever- nor will we be foreigners forever.   

Bem-vindo a casa- welcome home.  

*To me. 

Dry Drowning, Part 1.

I have started this entry in my mind more times than I care to admit.  I have started it over and over in different ways, but each feels wrong:

You hear the stories- you hear the stories but you never expect to be one.  To have one of your own to share. 

My husband and I don't have a fertility problem, we have a cancer problem. 

Have you ever jumped feet first, straight as an arrow, into an unknown body of water? let yourself sink slowly to the bottom just to find out how deep it really is? the air spilling slowly from your lungs as the water gets darker? Sometimes you reach it and sometimes you don't. 

I haven't reached it.  Not yet.  The air is still spilling from my lungs, the water is pitch black, and I haven't reached the bottom of the pool yet.  My toes haven't scraped along the floor even though the heaviness driving me deeper and deeper is relentless and becoming more familiar every day.  And I think that is why I cannot seem to start, compose, or finish this post.  

I've been drowning (to maintain the aquatic theme) for more than a little while now- been pulled down by the weight of unexpected and untenable grief and anger and terrible guilt.  And I don't know how to make my head and heart meet because of- or in spite of- or to address- it, them.  I don't know how to make my intellect and my emotion connect and converse and I certainly don't know how to let that conversation guide my words.  

I know.  This is all very cryptic.  And absolutely none of it makes sense beyond some scary words and pregnant feelings.  But I will grieve.  And I will get there.  

And I will tell my story.  

Our story.  

Who is the Wolf?

My son has this book by Eric Carle, Hear Bear Roar.  It's a typical Carle book with his stylized illustrations and press-to-hear-buttons attached to a tablet beside the pages.  Anyway- there's a button to press to hear a wolf.  This morning we had deep discussions (and belly giggles) about the accuracy of the various animal sounds.  When E pressed the wolf, and I happened to glance at the corresponding photo, well... 

Talk about a trigger. 

During my last- and to date most physically devastating- relapse I finally, angrily, acquiesced to seeing a therapist.  I struggled with relinquishing the punishing self-loathing that kept me from healing but did realize that at some point I would have to heal.  Or I would not make it.  

You see- my disease is as strong as me, stronger during those times when grief or fear or loss of control allows her prison walls to weaken.  In my late twenties (well documented earlier in this blog) those walls crumbled and she came out swinging and I was defenseless against the assault.  

Many moons and so many fewer pounds later at a tall 89 pounds- I was dying and she would not let go.  

So week after week I dragged my sickened, weakened carcass to an unobtrusive brick building, climbed one flight of stairs to an unobtrusive second-floor doorway, and knocked.  

In the middle of one of our sessions my therapist had me sit with my self.  She had me sit there, in her quietly cream-colored office, and close my eyes.  She had me think, or not think.  She let me let my mind wander for a while.  

And then she asked me to describe what I had seen, felt, smelt, visualized, experienced- whatever.  

So I did *shrugs*. 

I had witnessed a wolf.  A she wolf.  A rangy, wild, angry thing- hungry for something I could not feed her.  Lonely, cruel, hurt... I had sat with my self and instantly conjured this beast into being.  I saw her so clearly caged in a dense forest, pacing a clearing.  I heard her as she growled and whined.  I stepped back as she charged some imaginary threat, relaxed back into voyeurism as she paced some more, alone with herself.  And me.  Still it was that anger that drew me in.  Hypnotic in its intensity, her anger was like her- trapped and desperate to escape.  All that anger was pain and her pain was palpable.  

I could feel it and she could feel me and- 

"Who is the wolf?" my therapist asked.  

"What?" I blinked.

"Who is the wolf?" 

She didn't lead me, would never have said "you or the anorexia?"  But I didn't know how to answer her.  I didn't know who the wolf was- me? my disease? the part of me that was dying? the part of me struggling to just get over it all?  To be perfectly honest, to this day I still don't know the answer to that question.  I don't know who the wolf is- but I do know that she is still with me.  

What I have come to understand and accept is that the wolf has become mine and I am hers.  What we are to each other beyond that is something mysterious and often frustrating.  In my bones, in the essential parts of myself, I don't believe she is bad.  

But I do believe that we are sharing space meant for one.  Which sometimes feels like it is occupied by three.  

On Motherhood- and Some Other Things.

My son still wants me to hold his hand as he falls asleep.  

He will be three in a week.  

I know what people think about that- so many have offered their opinion.  But at the end of the day- at the end of every long day- there is going to be a time in the not too distant future when he doesn't care if I'm in there, out here, inside-outside-upsidedown. 

So for now, for as long as he wants and lets, I will hold his hand.  

I came out swinging last week, reentering the blogosphere with a lot of information without a lot of context. Go ahead, read that sentence again, I don't blame you.  The fact is, I am in the mood to write tonight and while there is an obvious choice of topic, I am making the easier choice.  

Because it has been a hell of a week and I need a break.

So- let's start with the whole 'had a baby' thing. 

I didn't know, I still don't know to be honest, what kind of mother I would be.  I didn't spend the duration of my pregnancy starry-eyed, holding my belly with mother-earthen anticipation and dreaming of my future child.  We elected to wait to find out the gender until the creature's illustrious arrival so I had no way of knowing who to talk to, or how to talk to it.  (Last night he and I talked at length about the airline seating arrangement of a Heffalump, the Gruffalo, a baby shark (actual - not PinkFong), and a dragon.  How things have changed).  Instead I spent it committing every cardinal sin- eating sushi, doing inversions until my MFM Doc told me to stop, adopting a puppy.  

You know. 

Like you do. 

I don't remember them handing him to me in the hospital, but I will never forget the first time I held my son.  I can't fathom what inspired it, but the first time he smiled is imprinted on my soul- he was only hours old. 

I don't ever recall reading about how the amount of laundry in a postpartum household increases exponentially.  

I have no idea the moment it happened, whether it was in that critical moment of reality, or later- maybe after my first uncontrollable weeping when I could not comfort him and he and I finally came to a sort of understanding- but I love being a mom.  His mom specifically, but a mom.  

Don't get me wrong I have my moments, and he has his.  I don't want to feel shame, but I do, in admitting that they happen more often than I like.  But that is honesty and transparency for you.  Oh- and I have tantrums to rival his own.  Even his own terrible twos.  But he is the brightest star in my universe- as warm as flame and as wild.  He's my feral boy and my cuddle buddy and honestly there are some mornings when he is the only reason I get out of bed.  

He is the reason that food goes in my system every day.  

He keeps me.  

The thing that no one prepares you for- not one book, not one blog, not one class or course or comment, is the depth of feeling that you drown in every day.  As a mama, mommy, mom.  The way it feels when they call for you in happiness, or in sadness, or in pain.  The way they make you.  

How their innate goodness, openness, indiscriminate interest in everything- how their joy makes you want to be so much more than you have ever been.  

How when they open their hand to yours, it is an endless gift.  

An endless, tremendous gift. 

It's Been a While.

Editions. 

Okay. 

I'm sitting on a plane with my almost-three-year-old son, listening to Cold War Kids while he commandeers my tablet for the duration of this flight.  (I am actually rather strict about his screen time- for these moments exactly).  

Some things have changed.  

Some have not. 

But let's get through this- 

Since I last blogged... well a lot has happened- but here's the nutshell version of events.

We moved from Norway

    to Spain

    to Virginia 

    to Florida.  

I wrote and self-published two *terrible* full length novels.  

My husband completed another Masters Degree. 

My education stalled in the wake of Motherhood. 

Ah- we had a baby. 

COVID- 

Cancer- 

More COVID- 

More cancer- 

F*ck it, let's start traveling again- 

This time we actually GOT COVID instead of just dealing with it's constant presence in our lives.  

Hurricanes. 

Evacuations. 

Possibly more cancer.

    and 

    

The inevitable return of the demon eating disorder- my oldest and least-beloved companion.

Oh and we rescued another demented shepherd dog.  

Oh again- navigating cancer while trying for another kiddo led to IVF, genetic testing, and the most profound and shattering grief and sense of loss I have ever felt (hello trigger). 

So here I am on this plane- here we are rather- traveling back to Florida after two frigid weeks in Colorado- and I thought I would take some time to reintroduce myself.  

Additions.

I started this blog well over a decade ago, a humble attempt to detail my travel escapades.  After a while and some heartache, it became something else entirely- a confessional of sorts.  An invitation to live through the worst possible (so I thought at the time) life moments with me.  Eventually I beat back the beast of a relapse and this space became, again, a journal about the journey.  

About life and how and where it takes you- me- all of us.  

In 2018 I decided to step away from this outlet, to take a break in order to collect myself and gather my words around me.  Today on this plane, I started writing again.  I started jotting down what was happening around me in my illegible shorthand.  

And it felt good.  

So I guess after all of this life, and all of these stories, I am back.  Back with more to tell, more to confess, more to admit.  

Hiatus? That was just the beginning. 

Les Pays Bas/ Hiatus.

This may not come as a surprise to some, given my waywardness and wandering mind, but sometimes I feel lost.

Sometimes I feel like I am floating outside of everything.  I could have used a better word there, a more poetic one, but I like the practicality and all-encompassing-ness of 'everything.'  I feel simultaneously cloistered and adrift.  Anchored, but not anchored to anything.

And yes, I recognize that this is only my fault.  I make the decision, have made the decisions, that lead me from Point A to Point B.  I am far too willful for it to not be my fault. 

But anyway, here's where I am today: stuck inside of my head, outside of everything else; disappointed, fretted, and ever-mindful of the future and my place in it.  I am acutely aware that my writing has been sub-par.  I suspect it is because of the mountain of chemistry and geology that I've climbing over the past six months, but some things are cyclical and sometimes I lose it, them.  Sometimes I lose my beloved words and have to wait it out.  

For me, forcing language is like arguing with a zealot.  It just doesn't turn out well for anyone.  

So I am going to stop for a little while.  Until it comes back, I am going on hiatus.  From this blog; from the empty, accusatory journals; from the pen and the (s)word.   I won't write until I'm ready to and I won't allow myself to feel bad for not writing.  I won't weep over words that I am losing because tears won't accomplish anything.  

And until next time.  

Stay tuned... 

The Long Game.

I've reached that point in the term- Oregon State runs on a 10-11 week schedule rather than a semester system- during which I lose myself in a blind scramble to figure out how to either save the world, or extricate myself from it.

Seriously.

I feel a little bad for my husband because he's been though this before, and he's going to go through it again.  This is the same point during which I become morose, taciturn, and angry.  Angry like you would not believe.  It's the kind of anger that has me tucking my nails into my palms until I break the skin to keep from punching every idiot I meet.  It's the kind of anger that leads me to believe that most people I meet fall into the aforementioned idiotic category.

It is the kind of anger that I turn back on myself.  Because I'm smart.  But I'm not brilliant.  So I can't save the world... not the way I want to anyway.

And here's where I run into trouble- I get angry and I lose patience.  I lose patience for everyone and everything around me because I feel so alone.  I wonder why no one else cares the way I do (note: on an intellectual level I know this is not true.  I know that I am not completely alone and, in fact, there are many many many people who care and are equally as angry and frustrated as I am.  But recall I'm currently seething and emotional destruction seems so much more satisfying than intellectual qualifications).  I wonder how long it's going to take everyone else to figure out how incredibly irresponsible we humankind are.

And then I have to sit back and let despondency wash over me like so many waves in a vast sea of anxiety.  Yes, I am prone to thinking dark thoughts and feeling my way through hard times and tough situations.  So I'll get over this, too.

But not before yet another crack wrenches at my heart and wrecks my brain.

And it's not even finals yet.

Time Flies.

Weirdly enough, it is Facebook that sometimes reminds me how quickly time passes.

This morning, for example, it told me (because like Google, it is creepy and all-knowing) that six years ago today I set off for New Zealand.  For 42 days.

In those 42 days, my weight plummeted from dangerous to deadly; my mind fractured, knit itself back together, fractured again; I got my first tattoo; I cried until I felt dry on the inside; I was given a name that is not my own, that still feels foreign to me despite a great man's conviction that he was right (and by default, I was wrong); I met some of the most intensely alive, vibrant, and giving people I have ever met.  Ever.

I learned yoga.  I learned to teach yoga.  I learned to let go.

Still, sometimes those many days don't seem real to me.  Sometimes they feel like a dream I had that sustains me even while it shames me.  It feels like something I didn't do, but some other version of me did.

Some version of me that I still want to be- with thin arms and ragged ferocity.  With terror and honesty and lies; with creativity that exploded because of desperation.  I miss that version of me.  Beyond the disease that is my oldest, most unrelenting companion, I miss that version of me for her flagrant, bold insanity.  Never was my writing so raw, never were my feelings so scattered or simultaneously so underwhelming and so overwhelming.

Never was I so wild.  My journals from that time, this blog from that time, are uncomfortable but they are real because they are hers.  And because she is me and they are mine, too.

Sometimes those many days don't seem real and then sometimes it seems like they are too far removed from me.  That she is.

Time.

Just.

Flies.

Mizpah.

Here are some things you may or may not know about me.

I often become obsessed with words and I get lines of poetry stuck in my head the way others get songs stuck in theirs.

I am frequently far away.  In thought or in my actual physical being, I am often separated from the people and the places that I love.

I have tattoos.  I have tattoos of birds, runes, witches.  I have tattoos that depict ancient Celtic folklore and everyday nursery rhymes.  I have a tattoo on my foot that failed to take it's intended shape but that I'll likely never cover over or fix because I sort of like failed, burnt look of it.


No one... I mean no one... would accuse me of being a Christian.

I am (I think) an okay person.  I have morals and understand right, wrong, and the vast gap of space between the two extremes.  But I do not believe in the god that Christians believe in.  I do not have the same faith.  Nor would I propose to.

Which is why I am likely as confused as you are at this point when it comes to my utter obsession with the word, the concept, 'Mizpah.'

It is a Hebrew word which means 'watchtower' (which is cool enough on it's own to be totally honest) and yet historically it has taken on a meaning so much more than that.  Mizpah is a sort of emotional bond- a word that signifies care and keeping and ongoing love even when separated from it all.  And from everyone.  It is a way of saying goodbye with the hope and intent of seeing each other again, in good health and happy.  And right.  It is important.

But hang on, it gets better.

The Genesis quote in which it appears (yes.  Genesis.  The first book of the Bible.... I am, in fact, waiting for the lightning bolt to strike at any moment):

'And Mizpah; for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.'

There is something eerily beautiful and mesmerizing in that phrase.  Something that makes me want to jump in feet first and have it put on my body.  'watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.'

I have always been hesitant to have words tattooed.  Runes don't really count.  At least not to my thinking; they are an ancient, unused language.  One for the gods and old time.  And the 'everyday nursery rhyme' I mentioned earlier?  I translated it into Runic before I had it tattooed.  So that was a thing.

But this- this would be something different.  This would override all of my ideal and young notions of TS Eliot lines as tattoos.  This would be a permanent reminder of all the people from whom I am parted; of all the time during which I am parted from them.  This would hearken back to a world that I willingly left behind.  This would be something different indeed.

And until next time,

Mizpah.

The Doldrums.

There is an area of the ocean called the Intertropical Convergence Zone.  It sounds complicated and terribly exotic but isn't really.  It is the region roughly between 5N and 5S where the trade winds meet, causing squalls and all manner of foul weather, but also where the hot equatorial air rises and keeps the world still for days, weeks at a time.

That stillness is the doldrums.

Sailors know it as such, poets know it as such.

Stillness, to me, is it's own sort of madness.  It's a quiet, low-scale, gnawing madness that strangles you slowly.  Stillness is my apparent nemesis.  It's why I'm so antsy all the time; why I can't do just one thing at a time but rather must do many things all at once; it's why I fidget and why I am a terrible patient.  It's why my knee bounces when I sit for too long and why long-haul flights feel like torture even as they feel like freedom.

It's why I like sharpness, speed, motion.  I like things to be vibrant and lively.

Stillness is madness.

This January is proving to be a test of my ability to withstand my own madness.  It seems like everything right now is standing impossibly still.  Like my whole life closed in on me and the walls of my cell are shrinking with it.  The wind has died, and my ship is failing.

And all I have to keep me company is the great grey sky.

New Year, Old Me.

I haven't written much lately.

I've been busy- catching and spreading bronchitis and pneumonia; catching the common head cold after that; flying across oceans; playing cutthroat dominoes; learning to ski (sort of).  I spent time with family and was introduced to Colorado.

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind, needless to say.

And then all of a sudden today it hits me that it's New Years Eve.

We all know how I feel about the holiday, so I'm not getting into that again.  But I have been thinking a lot about the passage of time lately.  Especially in the throws of three simultaneous illnesses.  I have been thinking a lot about aging and the slow creep of time into your body and brain.

I had bronchitis a few years back.  Because it's me, and I rarely run fevers, I actually had bronchitis and hypothermia at the same time.  To be fair, I was living in Alaska so it was a little cooler than what I was used to.  But that is wholly besides the point.  I was sick as a dog and still got out and ran, did yoga, shopped, and was generally irresponsible with myself.  And I survived.  Hell, I survived a lot worse than that bronchitis at the same time.  It wasn't exactly the brightest period of my life, but then which were?

Fast forward to these past two weeks.  Granted, I had bronchitis and some other stuff but I hardly think that makes a huge difference (there's my juvenile mindset again).  But I was, am actually, absolutely miserable.  And tired.  Like, weary to my core.  I desperately wanted to run in Colorado but was winded going up and down the stairs- also there was the deep, chesty cough that still plagues me.

Even that small amount of time- those four or five years- I feel throughout my entire body.  The shortness of breath, the weariness, the immense weight of time.  I feel them acutely, these passing years.  Which is so strange because I'm only in my early thirties.

Now it could be that I've done irreparable damage to myself over the years that has fundamentally changed me,  speeding up the slowing down of my body.  It could also be totally normal, I just don't really talk about aging with anyone.

But it's New Years Eve, so what the hell.

I am on the fence about resolutions- some years I make them, others years I don't.  This year I told my husband that I resolved to not be petulant (an incredible sore loser) when he beat me at board or card games.  I have also resolved to stay as young as my brain wants to be, rather than as old as my body is.  I have resolved to be myself.

And until next year...

I Want to Move to Wisconsin.*

This is sort of an obsession confession.  A few Thanksgivings ago, the family gathered at my Aunt's house in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

And I have been obsessed ever since.

No, I am not kidding.  I am actually utterly serious.  There's something about it, the entire state, it's like the fabled whole package, real deal.  The landscape strikes you first.  The starkness of it: the long, vast stretches of emptiness that are especially noticeable in the early winter.  And Lake Michigan- this mighty internal body of water that looks like the ocean but doesn't feel like it.  The white-winter that absolutely decimates the summer.

Then there's the beer culture and breweries.  The almost absurd 'facts' like there are more bars per capita than there are churches in Milwaukee(?).  It also hosts  the world's largest Irish Fest and North America's largest German Fest... imagine that.  What could those cultures possibly have in common?

Don't get me wrong, northern New England is still my jam.

But Wisconsin has the cheese.

I'll just leave that one there.

I also associate Bon Iver with Wisconsin, which is a total win for the state.  His music makes sense of the coolness and frigidity, makes it lyrical and mystical rather than just cold and northerly.

I think I might be one of the few people in the history of time that's actually been keen to move to Wisconsin, just because.  Just because I like the people (especially my aunt); just because I prefer a mountain of snow to a forest of palm trees; just because my one visit there has stuck with me.

Just because.

*Said no one ever.