Back In the Swing of Things - Outside

A hummingbird feeding at one of my parents' feeders in Louisiana.

I feel like my life is getting back to "normal" now in the wake of an eventful winter and spring successfully fighting cancer, and recovering from surgery in the summer.  I managed to do some writing this year despite the setbacks, and my agent booked some speaking events for me this fall.  Most days, I feel like I'm operating at or near 100%, although every week or so I'll have a day where I don't seem to quite get it all going up to speed.  Maybe that's normal.  Probably so.

I'm spending a lot of time outside these days, even more so than usual.  I've always been sort of an outdoors person, preferring to do whatever the task at hand may be outside rather than inside.  Grading papers, reading an article or book, listening to a podcast, returning phone calls (back when I used to return them - email or txt me now if you want a response), writing, or taking a nap.  As a kid, even in the wintertime, I would drag a sleeping bag out into the yard, crawl in with the dog, and take a nap in the chilly, bright day.  As I write this blog post, I'm sitting outside on the patio.

I like to be outside.  To see the sky, feel the wind and the sun, smell the breeze, and see whatever else is out here.

Last week, I was standing outside in the yard, again taking a break from writing, and I heard the sudden shear of wings overhead.  I glanced up to see a hawk chasing a pigeon across the sky over the lake.  The pigeon veered and careened sharply over the water and over the houses on the far side, curving back toward our side of the lake, and finally lost the hawk with one final sharp turn directly over our neighbor's house.  The hawk flew off for other prey and the pigeon rejoined the flock waiting for it on a distant roof.

A few days before that, I was dove hunting on an overcast, windy afternoon.  I sat by a nearly empty stock pond and watched for doves that ultimately never came that day.  Instead, I saw hundreds and hundreds of monarch butterflies.  They flew overhead and around me all afternoon - one even landed for a few seconds on the end of my gun barrel.  The flew in singles, pairs or in small strings, from 3 feet to 20 feet off the ground, orange and black flittering spots in the sky.  For several hours.  I'd never seen the monarch migration before in person.  I'm glad I was outside that day to see it.

I don't know what any of these things mean, if anything.  I don't have anything profound to say about them really.  In themselves, they are fairly run-of-the-mill in terms of what goes on every day in the natural world.

Perhaps, that's just it.  Our world is a thrilling place of wonder and mystery, even right here in the suburbs of one of the country's largest cities.  And it's going on all day every day.

Yet, sometimes it's so easy to miss.

Pennies Everywhere

Yesterday, I stood looking out over our backyard lake and saw something remarkable.

A large raptor - a hawk, osprey, eagle, I don't know - stood in the newly mowed grass a foot or so above the concrete embankment that circles the lake.  As soon as I saw him, I grabbed the binoculars to get a closer look.

It stood there a moment more, its hooked yellow beak shining in the sun.  I noticed its thick feathery legs, and the dark back and wing feathers which contrasted with the cream of its belly.

Suddenly, it began to move, taking a few steps toward the water's edge.  Its talons splayed wide on the concrete.  Slowly it stepped into the water, waddling a bit as it went in nearly breast deep.  It stood still for a few seconds, looking around and then down at the water.

And then it began to bathe.  Splashing and diving and shaking.  Dipping its head under the water, craning its neck back up to let the water flow down its back.  Extending its wings - all 5 feet of them, it looked to me - slapping them on the water's surface, then submerging and raising them dripping, holding them aloft.  Submerging its head again while apparently holding its breath, sending circles of waves out from its shaking body.

I was breathless.  I'd never seen a bird this large bathe. My hands shook and I leaned the binoculars on the windowpane simply to hold them still enough to continue watching.  I felt my heart beating as the bird turned and slowly made its way out of the water and back onto the grass.  In a magnificent, full-body shake, it threw off sprays of excess water and preened a wing for a few seconds.  Then, it crouched for take-off and lifted, flying up and away, disappearing over the trees that line the far side of the lake.

The whole episode as I watched it lasted not more than 60 seconds.

Things like this happen all the time.  It's just that we don't always see them.  Either we're not in position at the right place and time.  Or we're busy doing other things.  Or we simply don't notice, or think to notice.  We don't have eyes to see or ears to hear, and we don't still ourselves long enough to develop them.

Commonplace events like this brim with a grace and beauty made ever more piercing by their fleeting nature.  Annie Dillard, one of my favorite writers, compares such events to pennies we find in parking lots or on store floors.  Shiny, copper gifts freely strewn for everyone.

She is right.  The world is full of pennies.

I Am Subtly Changed

Poppies among the ruins at Ephesus in Turkey.  (photo by Jill Carroll)

This week I had the last of my appointments for a while at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  The tumor they cut from my chest was a Stage 1, everything else came out clean, and I'm done with treatment.  I'm as cancer free now as I've ever been.

I have another month or so of recovery from the chest cracking, but I can drive now (I hadn't been allowed to for the last 5 weeks) and I am pushing myself to get my strength back and not take so many naps during the day.  Nishta and I are making travel plans for the summer, and I've started booking speaking engagements for the fall.

So, in one sense, I'm getting back to my regular life.  In subtle ways, though, "regular life" has shifted for me.  Some of the shifts are manifestly evident to me; others are so barely detectable that I struggle to articulate them, but I "feel" them nevertheless.

I cry more easily now.  Many people who have open chest surgery report being markedly more emotional after the surgery than before.  I don't know why that is exactly . . . I don't know why I find myself tearing up nearly every day now.  There is no theme among the things that seem to prompt the tears.  I think I feel the fragility of the world - and us and me - more than before.  Things that seem solid are actually permeable.  Things that are beautiful and dear are also fleeting, making them all the more precious and our lives all the more blessed for having experienced them, if even just for a few moments.

I have a sense of vulnerability I didn't have a few months ago.  Rationally, most of know that we control relatively few things in our lives.  I don't control other people, outside circumstances, or my body.  To know something intellectually, however, doesn't mean I really "get it" in my gut.  

Now, I get it.  Illness - or tragedy or misfortune - strikes despite attempts at staving it off, and regardless of any "worthiness" however defined.  Like rain, it falls on the just and unjust alike.  This is just how it goes.  Given that, I revel in the days when I'm strong and free and well, and can do the things that are mine to do.

I experience interdependence with other people now more than before.  I've always been an "independent" person, a bit of a loner, having perhaps lots of acquaintances but few very close friends.  People say they experience me as a "self-sufficient" person who needs very little help or support in times of challenge.  I've experienced myself in that way for years.  

Not so much anymore.  It is abundantly clear to me that I would not have come through the last 5 months as well as I did (perhaps, not at all) without significant help from myriad people - those close to me and those who remain mostly strangers to me.  Of course, my partner Nishta has been a fortress to me in these months.  I owe her my life in many ways.  Our respective parents and family members have helped and hugged and loved me.  People in our close circle of friends have cooked and cleaned and given rides to and from the hospital, gone with me to appointments, sat with me during chemo weeks, and worn Kali jewelry to spur on the chemical hurricane designed to kill the cancer (see previous blog post).  Others have dropped off food, or sent cash and checks.  I received prayer shawls and quilts made by people I've never met.  Dozens sent cards.  Hundreds sent messages and prayers on facebook and twitter.  After a while, I couldn't keep up with all of it.  All I could do was just bask in it and be grateful for it.

Without all this, I would not be in the good shape I'm in today.  I needed help - and help that went beyond the professional medical help we paid for.  I am not self-sufficient.  No one is, really.  I am who I am because I've had help.  Knowing this pushes me to help others more than before, and to be humbled amidst any achievement because I know I didn't do it alone.

Don, the director of patient affairs at the hospital, wished me well as we finished up my last appointment.  He said for me to resume my life knowing that I'm a different person now.  Cancer changes you, he said, and therefore everything you do is changed as well.

I think, and can feel, that he's right.

  

Life, Death and Love

The tomb of Rumi - the poet of love - in Konya, Turkey

(photo: Jill Carroll)

I went to a lawyer this last week and got help writing my Last Will.  I'm having open chest surgery on April 15 and have been in the mode of "getting things handled" before the surgery and hospital stay - paying bills, doing the spring lawn work, getting the vegetable garden in, filing my taxes, and so on.

Getting a legal will on file seemed a prudent thing to "get handled" before I go under the knife in this particular way.  I've had major surgeries before, but none of them unveiled my beating heart and pumping lungs through a splayed chest, as this one will.  This one feels different.

Mind you, I fully expect to live through the surgery.  I'm optimistic and hopeful about things, and I've made post-surgery plans because I expect to here to fulfill them.

I've thought about death a lot, though, lately.  My own death.  What if I die on the operating table?  Or after the surgery due to complications?  What if the cancer returns, can't be treated and kills me?

I've tried to let myself really "be" with these thoughts.  Not in a worried, anxious way but in a sober mindfulness that death is inevitable for all of us in this life.  Given the reality of death - of my own personal death - and given that it could occur sooner than I expect, well . . . what about that?

I don't have a bucket list, and I haven't felt prompted to make one so far.  I've done a lot of things in my 47 years.  I've travelled to many countries, seen many things, had many amazing experiences, and met extraordinary people.  I've done different kinds of professional work, and feel good about the work I've done.   I've been blessed to have my needs, and most of my wants, met.

So, were I to die soon, I wouldn't feel like some kind of activity was left undone or unfulfilled.  Mainly, I would simply miss the world.  I love this world and this life, even with all its hazards and tragedies.  I am grateful for our world, for my life, and that I get to live it here.

As I sit with thoughts of death, what emerges for me as most important has to do with love.  Not love in the abstract, or love of or from some far off deity in the clouds - but love here in this life, with real  people, in everyday situations.  Have I loved?  Have I been loved?  Have I learned anything in the process?

More and more, I think that these are really the only questions that matter.  I am fulfilled in my life to the extent that I love and am loved by people, and learn from that love.  I have learned that, in and through that love, obstacles can be overcome and fears faced down.  Richness, growth and abundance beyond measure are found within it, in the being and doing of it.  And, thankfully, it overcomes limitations and mistakes.  I have plenty of both of those.

I am so grateful to have the capacity for love - for giving and receiving it, and for learning from its treasures.

Because of love, I can be ready to die - even though I expect to live, at least for now.

Feathered Joy

My grandfather's purple martin box.

I've been waiting expectantly since the beginning of the month.  For the last two years, the purple martins who live in our backyard box during the spring and summer have returned from their Brazilian winter during the first week of February.

The box sways in the wind atop its poll, hollow and forlorn, all fall and winter.  The occasional sparrow lights on its perches or squats in one of the dozen apartments, but I pull out their nests if they start to build.  These apartments are exclusively for the purple martins.

My grandfather tenanted large populations of martins.  He had two boxes, each holding over 100 apartments, and most were filled with singles or nesting pairs.  Every year many dozens of birds were born in his boxes, fledged and migrated to Brazil for the fall and winter, then returned to breed and raise their own young in those same boxes.  Papaw would sit in a cane-backed chair under the carport with a .22 rifle, ready to eliminate any starlings that tried to drag out and eat martin eggs or chicks.  His dog retrieved the fallen predators and placed them in a pile by Papaw's chair.  Sometimes, he let me and my cousins retrieve them, which thrilled us.

Rat snakes ate the martins and their eggs, too.  You'd look out the front window and see the long, black body hanging out of the hole while it gorged itself.  Papaw would ascend the ladder within reach of the snake, grab it by its tail end, and whip it out of the hole, forcing it to drop whatever bird it was holding.  In one swift move, holding the pole with one hand and the snake with the other, he would swing the snake in one wide loop to pop it like a bull-whip, sending its head flying over the black walnut trees and out onto the road.  My cousins and I marveled as he slit open the snake with his pocket knife to see how many of his beloved birds had been lost to the predator.

So, I come by my love of purple martins naturally.  I sit in the backyard swing to watch them every day, and I feel an almost inexpressible joy in doing so.  I can hear their sharp, crackling cries from high above me, even above the din of the freeway.  I can pick them out of the clear blue sky even when they are at their highest in the afternoons, surfing the circling wind currents to catch dragonflies.  They are master aerialists, darting and diving and free falling high or low over the lake, their forked tails splayed and turning as a keel.  They zoom over the water, touching their bellies to the surface so as to cool their chicks with wet feathers.  They eat mounds of mosquitos, dragonflies and dayflies.  They settle on the box perches at dusk, chortling and chirping into the setting sun before darting into their apartments for the night.

I yearn for them every year at this time.  And they always seem to come back to their home here right when I need them.  Two years ago, the first one returned the morning after I quit my job.  I woke up after a fitful night and there he was, black and shining in the morning sun.  I took it as a good sign.  Last year, the first bird returned as my friend was visiting us during a particularly trying time for her.  I took that as a good sign, too.

This year, they were almost two weeks late.  But, the first birds returned a few days ago and have already begun scouting out which apartments they prefer.  I begin my second round of chemotherapy this coming week and won't have much energy for anything but sitting in the backyard swing.

Again, it seems, the purple martins have returned to their part-time home at exactly the right time.

Kali: My Chemical Hurricane

Hindus have revered the goddess Kali for many centuries and in many ways throughout larger India.  My friend Calvin sent this card to us recently which displays her in a traditional form.

A dazzling array of devotional practices surround Kali, and the iconography representing her is equally lavish in displaying her common attributes: red rage-intoxicated eyes, lolling tongue, fangs, disheveled hair, dark blue or black skin, 4 or 10 arms, sometimes many faces, wearing a garland of human skulls, holding a severed head and a skull drinking bowl of blood on one side, and a sword and trident on the other.  She is accompanied by jackals and snakes, and often dances in triumph over her submissive consort Shiva.

She represents death, time, energy, the battlefield, change, ultimate reality . . . . . and disease.

I read an article years ago that focused on the ways in which Kali's famous powers of destruction and death are fused with her role as a protective mother in certain parts of India, especially with regard to disease.  The author pointed out that while that "big three" Hindu deities Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva dominate the major urban temples, Kali and other such fierce goddesses reign supreme throughout the smaller towns and rural areas.  People with little or no access to other kinds of medical care apparently need goddesses like these in times of disease.

It takes something more toxic than the disease to fight the disease.  Enter Kali.

This is my first week of chemotherapy for the malignant lemon-sized tumor in my chest.  I am being infused with 4 powerful drugs whose job is to find and kill the cancer cells.  Of course, they'll kill some healthy cells, too, which will push down my red blood cell counts and push out the hair on my head.  But, if they kill the loose tentacles of the malignant lemon and cut it down to size so the surgeon can cut it out permanently, I'm happy to endure the toxic storm of chemicals in my bloodstream for two months or so.

I'm not a very religious person.  I don't pray, meditate or chant.  I don't even do secularized yoga.  When pushed to label myself, I say I'm a pious agnostic.  I don't know what god or gods may or may not exist.  I don't claim to know what any deity wants or needs or demands.  All I know is that I and my world are a small part of an infinitely larger reality that precedes all of us, and will be here when we and our kind are gone.  I revere that even though I don't know what it is.  Mostly, that just means I'm silent in the face of it.

The image of Kali came to me this week, however, and at the same time that I began to use the term "hurricane" to refer to the toxic chemicals being infused into my system.  So, in a particularly "religious" way, I've concocted a sort of mythology that combines all this together into an empowering context for me to forge ahead in the weeks to come.

A hurricane of death and destruction is raging through my bloodstream.  It is combining and swirling and penetrating into every nook, membrane and cell of my system.  Seeking and destroying cancer cells.  Severing their heads, drinking their blood from their own skull bowls.  Drunkenly piercing them with fangs, intoxicated with rage.  Decorated in triumphal dance with a garland of skulls.  The jackals are crying and laughing, ready to eat the spoils.  The snakes are coiled to strike - no one gets away.

My chemical hurricane has begun.  She is coursing through my veins.  She is more toxic than the cancer, and will kill the cancer so that I alone remain.  My chemical hurricane is a category 5 and has been officially named.

Her name is Kali.

In the Thick of Things

My friend Steve Quill invited me to duck hunt with him in Port O'Connor this past week.  The season ends in a few days and I begin chemotherapy soon.  So, I skipped out on some things and rearranged others in order to spend some time in the duck blind.

The bay and lagoons around Port O'Connor teem with wintering waterfowl. Teal, redheads, widgeon, bluebills, pintails, golden-eyes and more spend their days feeding in the flats and soaking up the winter sun that reflects off the reefs.  They join the pelicans, cranes, cormorants and myriad other shore birds in crisscrossing the jetties, lagoons, islands and sandbars of the larger bay.  Ducks loaf the short winter days away, floating and paddling beside tailing redfish and surfacing dolphins.

We watched all this activity become visible as the full moon sank and the sun began its rise on the chilly morning of our hunt.  Four of us stood in brushy pit blinds on a small island no larger than a suburban driveway.  Retriever Jake crouched in his place near the water's edge, ready to bolt for downed birds.

After an hour or two, we'd taken our legal limit of redheads, as well as a pintail or two.  We stood up in our blinds to watch the clouds of redheads fly over us, picking out the shiny, rusted heads of the drakes and the subtle browns and grays of the hens.  Clouds of them flew over - hundreds of ducks at a time - swooping down to take a look at our bobbing decoys before they careened past us for more distant and enticing water.

One group, however, did not pass.  They swooped low over us and then circled up, high and back - heading straight for the open water amidst our decoys.  In a rush of swishing wings, the entire flock landed in the water not 20 yards from us.  They floated and bobbed, fluffing their wings, shaking off water droplets from the splashdown.

Before we could even look at each other, another group buzzed in from behind us and joined the ducks on the water.  Then another group came. And another.  And still another.  Within about 60 seconds, approximately 1000 redheads landed in our decoys right in front of us.

We were breathless.  Not even our salty old guide who's hunted Port O'Connor for 60 years had ever seen anything like this.  We looked at each other, giddy with amazement and joy, repressing the urge to speak so as not to scare them away.

At some point, I said aloud the only thing that came to mind:  "God is good."

My friend Steve, a retired Lutheran pastor, smiled and nodded.

The ducks stayed with us for 5-10 minutes.  Then, in one magnificent explosion, all of them rocketed up from the water at once and left, flying east for other waters.

For me, to hunt is to participate with intention in a fundamental law of life on this planet: that some things die so that other things may live.  To hunt is also to socket myself down into the thick of things.  Into the flow of life, of the earth, and of the world.  Into the Rhythm of Life that was here before we were, and will be here when we are gone.  Into the primal, natural realities that ground and determine our lives here whether or not we acknowledge them.

With the redheads - both the living and the downed - I feel my own soul expand into the Soul of the world.