The Waterfall

I remember wondering why the hell I had agreed to do this. But I knew why. Because Lizzy wanted to. Because I work hard to please my children. We were on a mother-daughter bonding trip to Costa Rica and riding horses to a wild mountain waterfall was one of the few things Lizzy had asked to do. She’d been totally disappointed when she found out she wasn’t old enough to ride ATVs in the jungle. So how could I say no to riding to a hidden waterfall in the rain forest?

There are times when my ability to forget unpleasant experiences is an asset; other times it is a real drag. This time, when I said, “Sure we can go,” I was forgetting the other time I had gone horseback riding in Central America.

Twenty years ago, Karyn and I were on a vacation in Belize, and since Karyn grew up riding horses, we signed up for a trail ride. On the way back from our equestrian adventure, my horse decided he needed to get back to the barn and eat hay—NOW! He took off galloping and I flew off, smashing onto the hard ground. I didn’t break anything, but was in pain for weeks. Once you’ve been thrown like that, if you’re not a horseback rider to begin with, it’s hard to ever feel safe on the back of a horse again.

But my chemofied brain had forgotten all about that accident until I swung awkwardly onto the back of my Costa Rican horse—and then my body suddenly remembered for me. Panic and dread shot up through my belly into my newly tightening throat. Shit! I remembered saying twenty years earlier, “I will never ride horseback again.” But there I was, on top of a horse. Being a good sport, and not really having any other options, my next thought was, “I guess I’ll just make the best of this—for my daughter.” I’m willing to do just about anything for my kids.

I Can't Believe

I wrote this piece in response to a prompt I gave in the Tuesday night class--"I Can't Believe..."

I can't believe my father is dead. I can't believe it was ten years ago today that I raced up to San Francisco Medical Center and drove around the visitor parking lot frantically looking for a non-existent parking space. Desperate, I finally pulled into an illegal spot marked with screaming, white diagonal lines, and at the end of that very long day, at 3 AM, when my father was dead and the world has stopped, I came out to a $180 ticket. The world hadn't stopped at all.

I can't believe that ten years ago was the day that I raced into the intensive care unit and found my father and his love, Ophelia, in the E.R. They had stuffed Abe's bed in a storage closet because there were no rooms available and he was taking up valuable space in the ER. They couldn't do anything for him, so they put him somewhere where he would be out of the way. Is that really how it happened? I don't remember, but he was definitely wedged into that storage room.

I remember sitting on the edge of his bed. The bed was crammed in sideways, the only way it would fit. I sat and held his hand. His arm was bruised purple up and down the forearm from the inside of his elbow down to his wrist. Even the top of his tattered hand, the hand that had firmly held mine when crossing the street, the hand that had hoisted me asleep (or pretending to be asleep) from the back of the yellow dodge dart with the slant six engine (or was it the brown Plymouth? I can't remember). That same hand was now bruised purple. They'd had six different nurses come in, all looking for a viable vein. Protocol. Had to do it. Did it matter that he was dying? Couldn't they have left him alone? Did it matter to anyone on that staff that my father spent his last hours being poked for veins that didn't exist anymore?

Greetings From Commonweal

 I’m writing this from my fourth (or is it the fifth?) annual Writer’s Journey retreat at Commonweal. Commonweal is a large, comfortable retreat center in Bolinas California, butted right up against the cliffs and the Pacific Ocean. It’s a center that focuses on healing gatherings for cancer patients, and the sacredness and energy of those gatherings can be felt the moment you walk in the door. It’s a magical place. A safe place. A quiet place. A place for healing and rejuvenation. Creativity flourishes here.

Right now, 21 writers are splayed out around me in the living room in a large oval, some on cushy couches, others on chairs, some sprawled on the floor or perched in backjacks. We range in age from 21 to 70. We are from Toronto and New York, Texas and all over California. Tonight we ate squash blossoms stuffed with fresh sweet corn and creamy ricotta cheese, a huge tray of sliced yellow beets, the freshest green salad with perfect avocados and roasted walnuts, and some kind of small pasta covered with a freshly-made roasted tomato-basil sauce. Peach-blueberry cobbler for dessert.  There is nothing like Clare’s food. I would go to a retreat on auto repair if Clare were the cook.

Tonight, I am trying to teach this unruly bunch of students (they get unruly at about this point in every retreat) how to incorporate vivid detail and a sense of time and place into their writing to make their stories come alive. We danced to drum music on our last break and now they’ve settled down and are writing for half an hour about their memories of a day when a major historic event took place, some time in the course of their lives—depending on their generation, it could be Kent State, the Kennedy assassination, 9-11, VJ Day, Pearl Harbor, the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Challenger accident. Their task: “Tell me the story of that day and who you were at the time, using specific, sensory detail to evoke the time and place and the people around you.” Some of them will love this exercise; some of them will hate it. The ones that struggle with this one will fly with the next one. That’s how it is on a writing retreat.

We’ve only been here two days so far, and in that short time, we have formed a living, breathing, vibrant community.

Anticipating the Empty Nest

 Eli is away at a three-week program sponsored by Stanford University for high school students interested in math and science. He’s taking an intensive class in topology, something esoteric and mathy that has to do with studying the surface of knots. I have no idea whatsoever what they’re studying. Or why. But Eli chose it and it’s clear he’s having fun. He sounds confident and full of himself.

I miss him terribly.

Lately, I’ve been walking around looking at mothers and fathers with their toddlers and infants, mothers with children in playgrounds, and I realize how very long it’s been since I was a hands-on mother in that 24/7 kind of way.

Eli has been away for two weeks so far. In all that time, it has never once occurred to him to phone home. He has only texted back to me only because I couldn’t stand it and texted him, breaking one of the cardinal rules of letting go your children. Let them go. Fat chance.

I know it is inevitable and appropriate that your children leave you. I know it is a sign of good parenting for your child to lose interest in you, utterly, for a good number of years, and certainly 17 is in that span of years. Still, it stung that it never once occurred to him to want to talk to us. To me.