Journey: spiral up?

A friend recently asked me if there’s anything I’ve learned over this past year and a half that I’d want to scream from the top of a mountain to the world. I’m not sure I’m in the mood for screaming from the top of a mountain at the moment. But the question made me reflect yet again on this experience. For me, it mainly comes back to being versus doing. For many of us, doing is easier than being. Being includes accepting life as it is and yourself as you are at this moment, right now. It’s very easy to do in our highest moments of joy, accomplishments, dreams coming true. It feels impossible at our lowest. Often people who want to support and encourage others say: “you are not in this alone.” Such support is crucially important and yet, we are alone: in this body, with this mind, at this moment. Nobody can possibly feel what I feel, physically or emotionally. Nobody can save me from myself. And nobody should.

I tend to have a good memory for dates. So, this summer my mind reminded me of the dates of my chemotherapy last year: June 7^th, June 28^th, July 19^th, August 9^th. This year I’ve made it to two concerts of our university’s summer tradition, the Penn’s Woods Music Festival. We went to see the 4^th of July fireworks, a very big deal in our town as a special committee has been preparing its design for a year. We strolled our Arts Festival, a 4-day event taking over the campus and downtown; a vibrant amalgamation of art from all over the country in many forms: photography, paintings, clay, metal, wood, jewelry. I’m fully aware that none of it was accessible to me last year. Having my son at home with us for a month took it to a different level of joy. Getting a proper celebration for his successfully finishing a predoctoral fellowship in economics (a 2-year full time job in research, one year at Yale, one at Princeton) and a soon-to-be-started new chapter–a doctoral program at the Kennedy School of Public Policy at Harvard–was amazing. We went to the French restaurant in town where we celebrated my 50^th birthday. That was “before,” in another life. Returning there now felt like a confirmation of a rebirth of sorts, not closing a circle but going up on a spiral. Spiral up is my prayer now. After spiraling down on so many occasions over the last 18 months, may I spiral up.

Fear was present, nevertheless. I had waited for an MRI in mid-August. This is a checkup routine that I was made aware of last fall—once a year a mammogram, once a year an MRI. I was warned by the professionals in the field, as well as by other women with a similar diagnosis, that everyone is very nervous about these tests, especially in the first couple of years. Your mind is writing different scripts–scary ones–and is very convincing. It takes determination and patience to refocus, to step outside the loop, to accept that this is what the mind does, and this is not the truth. Simply uncertainty. I was told that all humans live with and in uncertainty. Maybe. But as long as we have the luxury to not think about our life this way, to not acknowledge it, we are good, right? I was good for 50 years, or so I assumed. Back to being versus doing. I have no choice but to flow from moment to moment, from hour to hour, from day to day. I can’t skip ahead or peek from behind the curtain.

Thankfully, my MRI was clean. Yet another story began unfolding a few weeks prior. My dad was just diagnosed with lung cancer. My parents live in Jerusalem; I’m the only child. For the last 22 years, my parents have visited us in the US. They love our quaint university town, our house, our garden. They didn’t come last year as we were in no shape to host. We all were looking forward to their coming in September. Just to refill the batteries, to breathe. The Universe is editing the script, yet again. There is no firm plan B at the moment. We will see how things unfold. One day in meditation I received a message that “joy is the light found in the cracks, not a sky covered by fireworks.” I suppose it is true, although I love fireworks.

I just began my 18^th year as a university professor. Eighteen means “alive” in Hebrew. I love my job, I really do. I taught a summer online class, Sociology of Education, that I often do and one of the assignments is a paper in which students are supposed to illustrate at least three readings from our syllabus by a film or series of their choice. I can’t take credit for the assignment as I borrowed this idea from a dear friend and colleague, Suet-ling Pong, who passed away 9 years ago. Every semester that I teach this specific class, there is at least a handful of papers that blow me away. Dead Poets Society, Finding Forrester, Freedom Writers, Good Will Hunting are just a few movies that have been used over the years. The creativity, the depth, the beauty of the connections are a testimony that our young people are truly awesome. We just need to give them a chance. I found myself saying to my graduate class this week that you need to be present, you need to be aware, and you need to be intentional—I meant it in the context of reading journal articles based on quantitative methods. It is of course true everywhere else.

I continue breathing in the life force from our garden, literally circling it many times a day. We’ve seen better years for our roses, but our lilies outdid themselves. In addition to abundant yellow and red day lilies, beautiful orange and red Asian lilies, our Sorbonne lilies pushed out two stems that had 24 flowers in total (11 and 13). In July we had several rather brutal heatwaves, but August has been mostly mild and pleasant. I can already feel the autumn notes in the air at night, as well as in the red and orange maple leaves sporadically found on our grass. I don’t know what’s ahead, what’s in store for me, but I’m here now.