Author Archives: shrinkrapped

Subjunctive/Indicative

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what-if (1)

Phuc Tran, who as a child barely escaped death in the last days before Saigon fell, speaks in a TED talk about how grammar and culture shape one another and create different worldviews. English, he notes, employs the subjunctive tense–the could haves, would haves, and should haves. It communicates hope, imagination, and possibility, but also regret and longing.

Vietnamese, on the other hand, offers no such grammar. Lacking the subjunctive, it traffics in the indicative–how things are rather than how things might be or could have been. Tran credits to this foible of grammar his parents’ resiliency in tackling the survival needs of their transplanted family: “There was no psychic energy drained to focus on what could have been.”

Tran, however, thinking primarily in the English of his adopted country, often imagined the What ifs? of past, present, and future, musings his elders saw as pointless. The subjunctive tense allowed him to dream but also proved a quagmire when life didn’t pan out as he wished it would. “Accepting things for what they are, their indicativeness,” says Tran, “was my first step away from depression and anxiety.”

Tran’s talk led me to reflect upon how often we use the subjunctive in therapeutic dialogue: “What would it be like if you could let yourself ­­­____.” “What could you have done instead?” “How should your mother have responded?” “If you could feel, what might it be?”  The subjunctive softens defenses and helps gain access to feelings, fantasies, and memories, allowing the patient’s experience to emerge without too much interference. Most importantly, it fosters the expansive space in which possibility and creativity thrive.

Yet “the dark side of the subjunctive,” as Tran calls it, can lead to fixation on an unchangeable past. We see the dilemma play out between what we might call the more indicative approaches, like CBT, and the more subjunctive, analytic therapies that plumb the darker recesses of thwarted possibility. Who among depth psychotherapists and their patients has not wondered where the balance lies between past and present, what might have been versus what is? There is wisdom, as well as limitation, in Tran’s father’s outlook.

Mourning what has been lost or never was–and dreaming about what might be–is fundamental. So is acceptance of reality. The psyche, like language, is enriched by both the subjunctive and the indicative.
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Where has the subjunctive led you?
(Originally published in the December 2014 issue of Impulse, an electronic publication of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy)

Out with the Old, In with the . . . ?

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January 2015 calendarBefore the fresh start to the New Year started going a bit stale, I got a jump on things during the lull between Christmas and January 1. With no more presents to wrap, holiday feasts to prepare, and most of my clients out of town, I had plenty of time. Most of it I spent hiking in the glorious crisp weather we had following the deluges that brought green to the parched hills and a brief fantasy that our drought might be over. (It isn’t, but what’s the point of New Year’s if not hoping for things that will soon fail to materialize?)

When I wasn’t hiking, I was unsubscribing. Not quite ready to tackle the actual clutter in closets and drawers I’d resolved to conquer, I could at least take a stab at virtual clutter. How satisfying to hunt down the microscopic click here from all the defeated congressional candidates we’d supported who were now sending holiday greetings while asking for more money. And kudos to the Sierra Club, which uses a big font for Unsubscribe—not so worthy of praise that it kept me from clicking, but still, I appreciate their thoughtfulness. The ever-persistent requests for $3,$5, $10, ANYTHING, PLEASE, WE’RE SO DESPERATE!!! from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, like the mosquito that whines in the night, were harder to get rid of, but for the moment there’s no more buzz in my ear. Sorry, Nancy Pelosi. Bernie Sanders I kept on board, just in case.

Since I felt so good about purging emails, I moved on to purging my stacks of unread New York Reviews collecting dust on my night stand.  Vowing to be ruthless, I decided beforehand to stop only for articles about “The Serial.” Since the New York Review is too high-falutin to traffic in the most popular podcast ever, I was able to make short work of my tall pile, though I did pause for a few essays, including Michael Chabon’s  short paean to Oakland, before remembering why I had never made it through Kavalier and Clay or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. More successful at drawing me in was an article on the theory of broken windows policing—perfect for the New Year, since it’s another hopeful idea that hasn’t panned out too well. I passed on “What Happened to the Arab Spring?,” “Is There an Answer to Syria?,” and “Did Patrick Modiano Deserve It?” I guess I will never know, nor will I ever know who Patrick Modiano even is.

“Oh no!” my husband cried in dismay when I told him with relish of my purge, of my disloyalty to intellect and knowledge. But disregarding the opinion of others is one resolution that has gained traction over the years. My NYR-free nightstand has meant I am almost caught up on New Yorkers. And I finally began Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which I have been magically thinking about reading for years.

Then there’s my favorite ritual of honoring the change in the calendar: packing away all the holiday ornaments and tossing the Christmas tree over the balcony.

Of course, now that I’ve unsubscribed from 2014, the question remains: What do I want to subscribe to in 2015?

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How about you? What do you want to unsubscribe from and subscribe to this year?

No Joke

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The Pain of the Watermelon JokeI’ve come to expect the blatant and dog-whistle racism routinely sounded by Fox News. But Lemony Snicket?! For it was none other than the beloved children’s author of A Series of Unfortunate Events–aka Daniel Handler—who recently made racially insensitive remarks while emceeing this year’s National Book Awards. Right after his friend Jacqueline Woodson won for Brown Girl Dreaming, Handler told an unfunny joke about watermelon. He drew deserved criticism for his racially insensitive words, and quickly apologized. Woodson wrote about the injury in an eloquent essay called, “The Pain of the Watermelon Joke.”

In grappling with my very different reactions when prejudice comes out of the mouth of someone I like rather than someone I hate, I’m reminded of another unfortunate event involving poor word choice from my childhood.

I grew up in an all-white, affluent Boston suburb. My parents had moved from Tennessee because they did not want their children to grow up hearing black people called “Nigger.” Civil rights activists, they worked tirelessly to end racial discrimination in housing and schools.

Life was simple because we knew who to hate—bigots like South Boston politician Louise Day Hicks, a rabid opponent of court-ordered busing to end school desegregation. Buses may have burned in working-class Southie, but racism was far more genteel in our privileged enclave. Homes for sale would just suddenly disappear from the market should the prospective buyers turn out to have an abundance of melanin. My parents were outspoken critics of this northern variant of discrimination. Apparently racism knew no geographical bounds, as my mother was reminded every time she picked up the phone to hear the whispered hiss, “Nigger Lover.”

Undeterred, my parents spoke frequently at civic and church gatherings in favor of fair housing. At one such meeting, my mother rose from her seat next to her black friend Bernie and approached the podium. Particularly furious about the latest example of redlining that kept non-whites from living in our town, my mother shook her fist and proclaimed, “Let’s call a spade a spade!”

Realizing with horror the racial slur she had just uttered, my mother prayed for the earth to open up and swallow her whole. Meanwhile, her friend Bernie threw back his head and roared with laughter.

I wonder if their friendship could survive today in light of the furor surrounding this year’s National Book Awards. Much of the ensuing commentary fell into two polarized camps: what an unforgivable racist Handler was; or an attack on black people for seeing everything through a racial lens. One commenter wrote, “I cannot imagine that they are still friends.”

My fervent hope is that they are. I like to imagine the two friends sitting down together for a good, long, honest talk. Racism must be called out, but we must also know the difference between malevolence and ill-spoken ignorance.

I am saddened by the pain oblivion causes, whether it is Handler’s or my own. I want to do better, be better, even if I am clumsy in the process. There are plenty of times my fear of offending or of being upbraided for saying the wrong thing makes me say nothing. I do not want to remain adept at this kind of silence, where no one is the wiser, and no one learns a thing.

The National Book Awards created a stir, but also offer a way forward. In a recent Fresh Air interview, Woodson spoke further about Handler’s remarks: “I’m sad that so many are not connected to the deep history [of the African-American’s experience of racism]. Daniel didn’t know. He made the mistake of thinking we’re beyond that. Friendships are complicated. But he has a good heart. A lot of people who are ignorant have good hearts, and that’s what this kind of racial mistake looks like.”

So I’m guessing she and Lemony Snicket are OK, just as my mother and Bernie were, just as I hope to be with whomever I offend.  Such unfortunate events open up opportunities for understanding, if only we keep talking honestly with one another.

A Glint of Light in the Darkness

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Christmas balls hanging from treesRecently I had to be somewhere very early in the morning. Since I am not fit for human company without my daily walk and latte, I set out on foot before the pitch-black December sky had begun to gray around the edges.

My route took me through a neighborhood where all the households join together during the holidays to hang enormous shiny balls from the trees lining both sides of the street. I could see nothing, except for slivers of silver on each orb, reflecting the dim light from the lone street lamp at the end of the street. I continued on to my favorite café, its bright interior and friendly staff another beacon piercing the dark.

Fortified by my latte and the subtly glowing branches, I headed home to join the early stream of rush hour traffic.

I needed to be out and about before dawn to take my new friend Marcy to chemotherapy. Marcy was given a diagnosis of Stage 4 ovarian cancer and six months to live. That was four and a half years ago, time she has spent traveling all over the country seeking out cutting-edge treatment and clinical trials. These efforts have kept death at bay, but now the cancer is starting to break through even in the midst of grueling regimens.

These are dark times, for Marcy and for a world riddled with problems of such magnitude that sometimes the only way to cope is to withdraw. The season of solstice reflects this. Light is in short supply, and so, at times, is hope. The urge to pull inward is strong.

Yet even though Marcy may be running out of options, her spirit and will to live are strong. So it is in the world as well–joy and kindness abound, relieving despair. As we pass through the darkest time of the year, there are always shimmers of light.

 

 

 

Storm

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Heavy rainThe storm of the decade was predicted this week. Since the last three years of the decade have brought severe drought, it seemed both a low bar and cause for great excitement.

Although ignoring the apocalypse of climate disruption that is already upon us, we all got busy preparing for the apocalypse of wind and rain about to hit. Sandbags were filled, flashlight batteries checked, schools canceled, and many told to stay home from work. My husband was not among them—since he works in communications for a power company, he was told to report to the emergency center at 4:00 a.m. until the storm was over. So he booked a hotel in the city a block from his work and kissed me goodbye. My boss, who is me, also frowned upon my staying home, as time off = money lost. Still, my boss is sensible, and agreed to play the storm by ear.

Meanwhile, I brought the plants inside from the balcony, stashed the plastic patio furniture in the garage, printed out stuff I needed to review in case we lost power, and charged my cell phone. I even remembered to take the wreath off the front door.

All that was left was to indulge my secret storm fantasy: Which is that the storm of the decade would make it clear that I should stay home from work. We would lose power, forcing me to stay off the Internet. This meant that until darkness fell, I would tackle projects that somehow never get done—sorting through boxes of photos, cleaning closets, creating separate, labeled files from stacks of important papers. Then, in an act of supreme self-sacrifice, I would launch a salvage operation by eating all the Haagen Dazs in the freezer before it melted. I went to bed prepared for the worst, hoping for the best (which, according to some interpretations, was the same thing).

Anxious text messages from our daughters in Brooklyn and Barcelona kept dinging me awake: DON’T DRIVE TO BERKELEY!!! STAY SAFE. LOOK OUT FOR FALLING TREES AND LANDSLIDES, AND DON’T DRIVE! Their alarm was fortunate, as I might have otherwise slept through the total absence of wind and pitter-pattering rain drops. My daughters’ concern reminded me of being alerted to the dangers of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake by my mother, watching news reports 3,000 miles away while I sat working undisturbed with my clients as the building gently swayed. 

By morning, it had begun to rain a little, so I set out for my daily latte and walk, donning rain boots, rain pants, and my husband’s surplus rain poncho. First stop was Barton’s Bagels, to buy a bag of day-olds, but the shelf was empty. Apparently bagels were a popular item to stockpile the day before so parents who were losing their minds could feed their cooped-up kids something for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Wishing to stockpile calories burned for the Haagen Dazs frenzy that might hopefully possibly still come, I did my usual uphill walk, deterred only slightly by guys cutting up a downed tree, which they would not let me skirt. Then it was time to drive across the bay for work, a commute that was far better than usual since so many people stayed home. Parking was also much better than usual. At the end of a long day, I drove home, again in record time.

I heated up some soup for dinner. The Haagen Dazs was saved, as was my holiday weight-management plan. And that’s my report on the Apocalypse Formerly Known as Rain.

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Californians who don’t remember what that wet stuff is–how’d you are in the storm?

 

Benefit of the Doubt

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http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/.a/6a010535ce1cf6970c01b8d06105e4970c-piThe other night I walked out of CVS without paying for photos I’d just printed. By the time I realized my mistake, I was back home and too exhausted to return to the store.

I confessed my inadvertent shoplifting to my husband.

“If you were a black man, the police would be here hauling you in,” he remarked. “You might end up dead.”

This was the same day a grand jury failed to indict a white policeman for the choking death of an unarmed black man whose crime was selling individual cigarettes. Less than two weeks earlier, the Ferguson grand jury let another white officer off the hook for killing an unarmed black teenager who had recently stolen a pack of cigarillos. Two days before the Ferguson decision, a 12-year-old black boy playing with a toy gun was shot to death within seconds by the responding white police officer. Earlier this summer, a black man who was inspecting a toy gun while browsing in Walmart was shot to death after alarmed shoppers called the police.

Each situation is different, of course. But the key difference is that they were black, and I am white. I do not have to think about clerks tailing me in stores. I can come and go without arousing suspicion. Even if I were somehow caught in the act with my purloined photos, I would be given the benefit of the doubt. I could buy a toy gun for my child and count on not being killed.

But Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, and so many boys and men whose skin is darker than mine cannot. That’s the real crime.

I returned to CVS the next morning to pay for my photos.

“Thank you for your honesty,” said the clerk, smiling as he handed me the change.

I continued on with my day–another key difference between me and those whose days have been cut short.

 

Thanksgiving Pardon

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turkey farmI’m thankful for Andy Borowitz, a political satirist who keeps me laughing through my tears with The Borowitz Report, whose tagline is “The news, reshuffled.” If you would like a frequent, faster-acting-than-Jon-Stewart-or-Stephen-Colbert dose of humor delivered to your inbox, you should subscribe immediately. In the meantime, I will try channeling Borowitz here, for a Thanksgiving offering of sincere Imitation Flattery. But really, you’d be better off with the real thing. Happy Thanksgiving! 

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WASHINGTON, D.C. In a new twist on an old tradition, President Obama extended the annual Thanksgiving pardon to an entire class of turkeys—the two-thirds of eligible voters who failed to vote in the recent mid-term elections. “As I said in my press conference the morning after the election,” the President said, “I hear those of you who chose not to participate. Now I want you to hear me.  I am extending a second chance, and I expect you to take full advantage of it by exercising your franchise.”

Republicans were swift to condemn the President.  Governor Rick Perry of Texas, presidential hopeful and a supporter of the Lone Star State’s efforts to restrict voting, said, “How dare he inject politics into this holiday ritual? The Republicans would never dream of scolding those who stayed home on Election Day. Matter of fact, in keeping with the spirit of the season, we are very grateful.”

Speaker of the House John Boehner went even further in expressing his displeasure. “President Obama’s massive amnesty is just one more example of executive overreach,” the Speaker pronounced.

The White House declined to get embroiled in the controversy. Asked whether President Obama had abused his holiday prerogative, Press Secretary Josh Earnest had only this to say: “As the President has made clear, he is simply pardoning a whole lot of turkeys this Thanksgiving.”

Out of the Box

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Recipes spilling out on counterMy daughter Ally says I’m a hoarder. She may have a point. As I search the cupboards for a spanakopita recipe gone missing, hundreds of loose clippings cascade to the floor.

Not one is from my mother. She’s bequeathed many wonderful things, but heirloom recipes and a deft hand in the kitchen are not among them. What tumbled from my mother’s cupboards were boxes of Cheez-Its and Ring-Dings. Mostly they brought private relief from the black hole of suburban housewifery. But every afternoon when I came home from school, my mother shared her stash while I shared the ins and outs of the day. I loved licking the salty orange dust from my fingertips and how the glazed chocolate shell yielded to the cake’s soft interior.

Since my mother’s cooking skills were limited to sprinkling onion soup mix atop a cheap cut of beef, most of my childhood meals came from a box. We had almost no cookbooks. Just an ancient Fannie Farmer and a pristine Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the latter a gift from my father laden with hope and rebuke. One prized paperback summed up my mother’s culinary philosophy: Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book.

But I loved to cook, or at least to experiment, and my mother loved to indulge my whims. Perhaps hoping to someday palm off the task of feeding us night after unending night, she never minded the spills on the counter or the mess of bowls in the sink. My first made-from-scratch cake had the heft and taste of a hockey puck. Yet my mother and I delighted in the rainbow frosting magically created from just four squeeze bottles of food coloring. By high school, I had graduated to fancy-dress dinner parties for my friends featuring Boeuf Bourguignon. Julia Child was at last put to good use. Still mastering the art of baking, I also served an inedible Apple Harvest Cake as cloying as marshmallow fluff.

I have been collecting recipes ever since, and am renowned for my cakes–chocolate-espresso tortes, lemon bundts that pucker the mouth into permanent ecstasy, an apple-walnut cake that lays to rest the ghastly sweet ghost of its predecessor.

My daughter and I have continued the ritual of sharing gossip and snacks in the kitchen, with one crucial difference. From the time Ally could stand, she’s been folding wet ingredients into dry, absorbing my preference for food made from scratch. Once she even pulverized Cheez-Its, reconstituted the crumbs with water, and baked the soggy mass in a quest for home-baked goodness. When Ally left for college, I hand-copied her favorite recipes into a scrapbook. Like my mother, I enjoy the fruits of my encouragement, and of Ally’s labor: she gladly cooks for us every time she’s home.

Ally has a lot of recipes to choose from: The Joy of Cooking competes for shelf space with whole volumes dedicated to soup, chicken, pasta, chocolate, every world cuisine and passing food fad. Weight Watchers and vegetarian cookbooks stand ready in case I ever follow through on my good intentions.

But the books are nothing compared to big manila envelopes stuffed with recipes culled from magazines, newspapers, and the mothers of ex-boyfriends. So I’ve hired my daughter, who’s looking to earn some extra cash between college and a real job, to tame the mess. True to her generation, Ally seeks a technological fix.

“Haven’t you heard of the internet?” she asks.

I have. But online browsing can’t compete with sitting down surrounded by stacks of books and clippings to plan a dinner party, a week’s menus, or how to use the odds and ends at the back of the fridge.

Ally is right, though: It’s gotten out of hand. So I set her up with scissors, double-stick tape, and notebooks to organize my recipes, most of which I’ve never tried. Like every hoarder, I hold out hope that someday I’ll put everything to use.

“When are you ever going to make Buche de Noel with Meringue Mushrooms?” Ally inquires.

I swear that this year will be different from Christmases past. But Ally lacks faith that my plans for show-stopper desserts will no longer fall victim to last-minute wrapping. Nor does she appreciate the value of multiples. Otherwise, she wouldn’t bother asking, “Do you really need another recipe for dal?”

Hmmm. Letting go is hard, but I suppose not. One for the “Discard” pile.

“How many different kinds of chocolate cake do you plan to bake?” Ally persists.

All of them. Chocolate has its own special “Keep” pile.

Now I get why hoarders go psychotic when well-intentioned relatives trick them into leaving the house, then move in with dumpsters. Since Ally clearly cannot be trusted with sorting, I must discern my own treasure from trash.

Sifting through 40 years’ worth of recipes is like an archeological dig. Excavating the layers uncovers a civilization once heedless of time and cholesterol—1 cup heavy cream, ½ pound grated cheddar, ½ pound ham, just to make a noodle casserole. Or Duck Gallantine, which involves boning a duck and rendering fat for many hours. I have rendered a lot of fat in my life, and most of it is on my hips. I prefer a faster route, via scrumptious chocolate layer bars.

The dig also reveals an era of unexecuted dinner parties that would have led to insurrection by Downton Abbey’s kitchen staff: Roast Saddle of Veal with Mushroom Sauce for 12; Ham Braised in Port with Brown-Sugar Crust for 20. My early browsing exposes a period of sheer fantasy: enough time and money, matching china and crystal, and a couple of Masterpiece cooks on loan from BBC.

This by-gone epoch is overlaid by the reality of young family life, with lots of hidden-vegetable recipes. Next comes the modern era of chicken every which way and grains previously known only to ancient Incas.

Finally I am ready to turn over the clippings that have escaped the recycling bin. Ally sets to work as I hover nearby to make sure she doesn’t jettison my multiple cheesecake recipes.

Now we are cooking! In no time at all, Ally has brought order from chaos. She is also salivating. “Let’s make Portobello Bourguignon!” she exclaims, echoing my youthful pick with a vegetarian version sure to win over Julia Child.

And so we do, working side by side, peeling, chopping, sharing the ins and outs of the day. I imagine my mother, Ring Ding in one hand, saluting us with a box of Cheez-Its in the other.

(Originally published in skirt! Magazine)

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What are your family’s food and cooking traditions? How do you organize your recipes? Any favorites you’d care to share? (I’ve cheated and found some links for some of the drool-worthy ones I mention, but of course they are missing my tweaks and all the stains on the page. And alas, I could not find Tart’s chocolate-espresso torte recipe, so you will have to come paw through my tattered index cards.)

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Getting Out the Vote

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Absentee BallotsMy husband and I are political junkies—or at least we were until we had to stop following the news to preserve our mental health. Still, we consider voting a duty, not a privilege. So when our eldest daughter turned 18 in 2006, I wrapped her birthday presents in voter registration forms.

Even then, back in the days when hope was ascendant and our fervor less dampened, voting was complicated. For Emma’s first election, we sat down together at the dining room table piled high with Voter Guides, newspaper clippings and endorsements, and a small forest’s worth of glossy political ads. The lesson commenced.

“It’s pretty impossible to be well informed about all the issues and candidates,” I instructed. “So one strategy is to follow the recommendations of people you trust. Or compare all the editorial endorsements of various newspapers and average them out.”

“Then there’s plenty of well-intended but poorly drafted initiatives. You have to decide what message you want to send or whether to vote purely on the merits. It’s perfectly reasonable to vote your ideals, but it’s also a good strategy to vote pragmatically. Sometimes, to be honest, I vote against whoever is using the most FULL CAPS in the voter information pamphlet—never trust someone who only knows how to shout.”

“This is really depressing,” sighed Emma, staring at hundreds of blank bubbles on her vote-by-mail ballot.

When our daughter Ally turned 18 three years later, she was less interested in my voter education drill. In fact, she registered in her college town, beyond the reach of my knowledge of local issues. Still, a mother can dream of eternal influence, so I sent Ally my trusted friend’s carefully researched election recommendations on statewide and federal choices.  I assumed she’d be thankful for my guidance.

Wrong again.

“I really don’t appreciate you sending me that,” declared Ally. “I’m trying to be my own person.”

I apologized immediately, adding how proud I was that she was following the issues and figuring things out for herself.

“How are you staying informed?” I ventured.

Ally replied, “I’m just going to vote according to this mailer I got from the Democratic Party.”

So much for Ally’s declaration of independence.

Always the child who suffered most from Post-Traumatic-Dinner-Table-Political-Rants, Ally has now removed herself even farther from our impassioned discussions and maternal interference, to Barcelona. So Jerry Brown and the Democrats will have to make do without her vote.

Emma, though, wanted me to send her mail-in ballot to Brooklyn, where she’s been temporarily sojourning as a starving artist. I am happy to report that she’s been calling for election advice.

Trouble is, now that hope has curdled, I have been shirking my civic responsibilities by being less well-informed. Of course I’ll vote, but I hadn’t quite gotten around to the research phase. So I suggested a couple of sources to check out, then gave the only reliable advice I could:

“Remember, the ballot must ARRIVE by the end of election day, not just be postmarked. So be sure to mail it in time. And please–let us know what you find out, so you can tell us how to vote.”

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What is your method of being an informed voter? How have you talked to your kids about politics and voting? Do they follow your lead? 

 

Filling in the Blanks, Turning the Pages

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Tonight I will fill in the last blank space for Year Two in my line-a-day-five-year memory book that my friend Mary gave me soon after I was diagnosed with cancer. Tomorrow I will begin Year Three.

I like to look at what was happening in the previous year’s entry (now it will be years’ entries!) Mostly they’re pretty mundane: “Hiked Baldy and went to work.” “ Skyped with the kids.”  “Saw Gone Girl [disappointing].” “Saw Kill the Messenger [two thumbs up].”   “Slept poorly.” “ On track with my eating.”  “Not on track with my eating.”  “Wrote.” “Avoided writing.”

Sometimes, though, when I read the previous year’s entry, I’m jolted by the poignancy of all the mundane moments that make a life, and how they do not last forever. Three days ago, for instance, I read that last year on the same date, I had lunch with a colleague. We met to share our experiences about what it was like to be therapists who were working while undergoing chemotherapy for an article I was writing, “The Myth of the Intact Healer.” Seven months out of treatment and with an excellent prognosis, I had just come out of my wig. My colleague admired my curls, then told me about her collection of wigs—the ones she would never come out of because she was never going to be done with cancer until it had finished her off.  She was as beautiful and full of life as all the times I’d seen her throughout the years.  I remembered our lunch as I read last year’s entry for October 25: “Had lunch with S.” That was the last time I saw my colleague—she died last month.

It brings me up short, this turning of the pages, remembering, filling in the blanks, wondering how many more blanks I’ll get to fill in, whether I will complete one or two or ten line-a-day-five-year memory books.

And now, on this day of the calendar’s cusp, as I move from Year Two to Year Three, I’ve opened an email from a woman I haven’t yet met named Marcy. Marcy lives in Portland, and has been living with Stage 4 ovarian cancer for the last four years. (She blogs about it at livinglydyingly.com) A long-time organizer and activist, Marcy believes in the power of community, building it through ever-expanding connections.concentric circles in rippling water I came to know her through being on one of the farther concentric circles that ripple out from her center. Marcy’s request for help with transportation and housing to pursue cutting edge treatment around the country traveled through many networks to reach my friend’s activist daughter, who forwarded it to her mother, who forwarded it to me.

I haven’t yet been able to take Marcy to the airport when she’s needed me to, and she hasn’t yet needed our extra bed. But we have struck up a lovely email correspondence. In the one I opened today, Marcy included a link to something she’s written for Yes! Magazine. It’s called “What I’ve Learned About Living from Dying of Cancer.” You should read it yourself, because as you can see from my confession in earlier paragraphs, my summary certainly won’t do it justice. But here is one of my favorite parts:

I sought out other women living with a pink slip from life and discovered how hard it is for us to find each other. Medical privacy laws don’t help. Advocacy groups are often Web- or hospital-based, but not everyone flourishes in those settings. Eventually I created my own support circle of other women with terminal cancer. The group is called “It’s a Dying Shame,” and the outreach flyer states, “Our goal is to explore the rich and peculiar territory of facing our own deaths. Together we can mine the humor, strangeness, and beauty of a life turned upside down. Join us for tea down the rabbit hole.”

My cancer scare notwithstanding, I do not pretend to have the vaguest idea of what it is like to have gotten a pink slip from life, and I am glad for the ignorance, glad that I have the luxury of skirting that rabbit hole for now.

Still, when I turn the page on another year tonight, I will think of my colleague, of Marcy, of the many good and bad movies I have seen and hope to see more of. I will try to honor each day’s moments, and how precious and mundane and fleeting they are, whether they stop before they can be recorded in the next entry, or go on and on and on.