Category Archives: Personal

B is for Boomerang

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Boomerang

“Bite your tongue.”

That’s advice I’ve been taking to heart ever since our 26-year-old daughter Emma moved back home right before Christmas. Emma spent two years as a starving artist in Brooklyn after college and a temporary job in Russia—she loved living in New York City, except for the starving part. And the weather. So now our little fledgling has come home to roost.

Just as Brooklyn is the thing for young adults to do, so is boomeranging back.

For someone who spent as much time as I did mournfully anticipating the empty nest, then moping around once I actually had one, you’d think I’d rejoice at Emma’s return.

But it’s surprising how quickly you can fall in love with a clean house. Not to mention the husband you’ve neglected over the past couple of decades.

Just as Emma had grown fond of her independence, so had we. Now we’re all like not-quite-roommates who are trying hard not to engage in nagging and eye-rolling. (Guess which habit matches which generation!)

There’s nothing really wrong, exactly. Emma is sweet, and definitely more mature than when we packed her off for Adventures in Young Adulthood. She tells us that she was the one in her Brooklyn household who always turned off the lights and kept the place clean (I’d really hate to meet those other housemates).

But it’s true that she now leaves smaller debris trails than she used to. Emma also cooks dinner for us once a week, chips in for gas and groceries, has found work, and takes her art seriously. She seems to be following some inner plan, although what it is and on what time line the plan will unfold is anyone’s guess.

Still, having Emma back is a tough transition—for all of us. She misses coming and going as she pleases without parents wondering if she’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere. I miss turning off the radar on that particular nightmare. On a more mundane note, I also miss being able to get into the car knowing that NPR will come on instead of some horrible noise from a different preset. I miss dishes done on my timetable. I miss towels that hang neatly from the towel rack. I miss not feeling like a control freak who is constantly resisting the urge to nag. I miss my unbitten tongue.

In the meantime, I keep reminding myself how lucky we are to have a child we love and who loves us, and who feels secure in the knowledge that she has a home to come back to.

Two children, actually: Emma may soon have company. Her younger sister, Ally, has been living in Barcelona, but she, too, plans to move back at the end of the summer while she figures out what comes next.

I used to say (and even mean it!) whenever the girls visited for holidays, “There’s nothing I like more than having everyone here under the same roof again!”

Be careful what you wish for.

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 Anyone boomeranged back into your empty nest? How have you weathered the transition?

A is for April Fool

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At least I feel a bit foolish committing to a month of daily blog posts with only Sundays off. When it comes to describing my writing practice, A words like avoidance and ambivalence spring to mind. A few years ago when I cut back on my work life to devote more time to writing, and people asked how it was going, I had to confess, “Well, it turns out I’ve freed up more time to avoid writing.”

Not only am I undisciplined, I have also made a sad discovery: The Spirit—the one I rely on to speak through me as if I am just taking dictation rather than toiling away —also suffers from writer’s block.

But rather than throw in the towel, I have thrown myself into the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I’d heard about it a couple of years ago from my writing friend Claire, who participated. Then last year, the Write On Mamas, to which I belong, participated in the Challenge in a kind of round-robin way, with the members each contributing a letter. (Mine was E is for Empty Nest, which I reveal here with some trepidation in case I want to recycle it for this year’s Challenge. On the other hand, recycling is a conscientious choice for a planet threatened with environmental degradation, so if you see it here again in a few days, it is not because I am ambivalent and avoidant—aka lazy—but because it is the ethical thing to do.)

As part of our writing group’s effort, I also wrote a post on my own blog called A-Z: A Writer’s Alphabet. I was not yet ready to take the plunge, but I could at least come up with a line pertaining to writing for every letter of the alphabet. I had gotten into the habit of writing one line, a far less daunting task, with my friend Mary’s encouragement.

Then the aforementioned Claire said, “You really ought to do the A to Z Challenge! It’ll be good for you.” (Actually, she said “A to Zed,” because she’s British, which makes everything she says sound persuasive.) So now I am trying to think of writing as just a bunch of lines, strung together. One line upon another building into a paragraph, a post, an essay, an article, even a book. Or at least a month of daily blogging.

As you can see, my blog is called Shrinkrapped. It’s not about therapy, but I am a therapist, so psychology suffuses my world view. I’m particularly interested in how the personal, the political, and the psychological come together.

Some of my current favorite obsessions include: Motherhood; The Empty Nest (and, since my daughter has recently moved back, the not-so-empty nest); Politics; Psychology; Friendships; and Ruptures in Women’s Friendships. Plus, since everything is copy, one unwelcome obsession: What I’m calling my Cancer Detour, a new muse that showed up in my life in September 2012 (I’m fine now).

I hope you enjoy Shrinkrapped. Let the Challenge begin, and please chime in!

 

 

 

 

 

Good News, Bad News

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Good news bad newsWhen my friend Sue met her future husband, she was eager—and nervous—to tell her parents she had fallen in love.

“There’s good news and bad news,” Sue  began. “He’s Jewish.”

“Oh, Sue!” Her mother exclaimed. “But we’re Catholic! Nothing against him, it’s just that we’re so different. It will never work.”

“Oh, that was the good news,” Sue replied. “The bad news is that he’s a Democrat!”

I, too, have good news and bad news, though it is not so charming as Sue’s (whose family, by the way, grew to adore her husband).

First the good news: I have been published in Salon! Making it into a major publication is a dream come true.

The bad news is that the essay is about what some, but not many, people already know:  I carry the BRCA mutation. This is the genetic defect that puts women at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. It was made famous by Angelina Jolie, who wrote in the New York Times two years ago about her decision to surgically remove her healthy breasts to reduce her BRCA cancer risk. Just last week, the Times published another piece by Jolie about her recent decision to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes to avert ovarian cancer.

Jolie’s first announcement came soon after I had finished nine months of treatment for a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer, which was fortunately caught before the cancer had spread. My treatment included surgery (a complete hysterectomy, so the deadlier ovarian cancer threat no longer looms), radiation, and—just in case—six cycles of chemotherapy.

I had known well before my diagnosis that the BRCA mutation resided in a distant branch of my family tree and had mentioned it to my doctors, but did not pursue testing at that time. Two years later, my uterine cancer’s unusual cell type and the family history I had disavowed led the surgeon to suspect BRCA in me, not just in cousins I barely knew. So I met with the genetic counselor and went to the lab to have my blood drawn.

I got the results a week before my first chemo session in 2012. Sure enough, I tested positive for the BRCA2  mutation (a slightly less risky variant than Jolie’s BRCA1).

So I have something in common with Angelina Jolie! But there the similarities end, for I have chosen high-risk surveillance over prophylactic mastectomies. It’s actually the more common choice among BRCA-positive women, but you wouldn’t know it given all the attention to radical  surgery to remove healthy breasts. Neither choice is easy or risk-free. I felt I could contribute to an important conversation by writing honestly about what it is like to know that one’s body houses a potential time bomb as well as what went into my decision to go with the less-heralded surveillance option. And I am grateful that Salon agrees.

My BRCA mutation has been there all along. I have known about it since Halloween 2012. And now you know it, too. It is perhaps not the best way to find out, but I trust you will understand.

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Please click here for the link to my Salon piece. I’ll be curious to hear what you think.

 

Season of Renewal

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Iris

Spring is officially here, and with it comes a sense of renewal. Here in northern California, the green hills and blossoms make everything feel possible despite the drought. Even on the East Coast, as temperatures inch upward, the earth comes alive from underneath the snow that is inexorably melting.

It’s a time of hope.

How fitting and delightful, then, to visit with our friends from Indiana (where, they tell us, the crocus and daffodil are beginning to make a strong stand). Terry and Lisa have always symbolized for me the promise of fresh starts after dark times. After suffering through a painful divorce and the death of a spouse, they met at a conference and fell deeply in love. With fulfilling careers in separate states, Terry and Lisa maintained a long-distance relationship for years. Marriage was certain, but on the horizon.

Then suddenly, everything became less certain. Two springs ago, Terry and Lisa lay in separate  London hospitals in medically induced comas. They had been hit by a double decker bus on their first day en route to a conference. The early reports were grave—no one knew if they would live. Or if they’d be better off if they didn’t. Anxious days and weeks followed, until Terry and Lisa were stable enough for separate medical transports back to separate states.

Their road to recovery has been long but steady. And, miracle of miracles, complete! Today you’d never know how close Terry and Lisa came to death. They are vitally alive, emerging from dark times with even greater gratitude and love. Such a close call did, however, change their horizon–last year Terry and Lisa consolidated two states and two households into one, and got married! They are thriving, and we are so grateful for the renewal of love and life that they embody and inspire.

Lisa and Terry September 2014

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What does spring mean to you? What  opportunities for renewal will you embrace?

On Turning Sixty

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60th Birthday Hike, EBMUD watershed, Rocky Ridge“How are you feeling about your birthday?”

It’s a common question, especially when the birthday ushers in a new decade.

My birthday, which I recently celebrated, is the one where people say, “Sixty is the new 40!” That’s because it is impolite to say, “Sixty! That’s verging on old!”

Not old enough to get the senior discount at the movie theater, enroll in Medicare, or collect Social Security. But within spitting distance.

How do I feel about turning 60?

I feel great.

Since being diagnosed two and a half years ago with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer, there is nothing I have wanted more than to grow old.

I was lucky—my cancer was detected early, and I am completely fine. Still, a serious diagnosis permanently pierces the veil that obscures mortality. And even though I fervently believe that anyone who says “the gift of cancer” ought to be shot, the glimpse of death that burned through all my neuroses and made me feel keenly how much I want to live is the gift of cancer.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes that when her husband had a cardiac event in 1987, she refused to believe him when he said, “Now I know how I’ll die.” He dropped dead of a massive heart attack 16 years later. Sixteen years is a decent interval, but still, the original diagnosis presaged his end.

That’s how I feel, too. Unlike with Didion’s husband, whose condition was dubbed “the widow-maker,” there is no reason to believe that my cancer will make my husband a widower, my daughters motherless, my future grandchildren unknown to me. Still, it shadows me–not as a morbid preoccupation, but as a plausible outcome. I hear about people who beat cancer 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Then it comes back with a vengeance.

A few months back, my husband and I were chatting about life after retirement.

“I don’t care about living till I’m really old,” Jonathan said. “As long as I make it to 80.”

I began to cry. “I don’t think I’m going to make it there with you,” I said softly as he put his arms around me.

I hope I do, just as I hope to get the senior discount at the movies, know my grandchildren, celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.

But whatever happens, I have made it to 60! We celebrated exactly as I wished–a thirteen-mile hike through rolling green hills with Jonathan, followed by an intimate dinner with dear friends. We toasted with gin and tonics, bemoaned then solved the problems of the world, and gorged on an incredible gourmet spread topped off by chocolate Kahlua cake. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Lorrie's 60th

Here’s wishing for many happy returns.

Transplant

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A pot of flowers doesn’t seem like much. It can’t begin to compensate for the loss of rose beds, lemon trees, azaleas just coming into their glory. But at least it’s something to greet my in-laws the day they’ll cram what they can from sixty years of marriage into two tiny rooms in their new retirement home.

My husband’s parents have never much cared about material things; flowers are the one indulgence they allow themselves. A pale yellow Cecil Bruner rose foams over the entry of the Craftsman bungalow they are about to leave behind. Bluebells, daisies, holly—every season’s bounty—grace the coffee table in their living room. Now the vases, furniture, and garden tools have all been donated to charity. My father-in-law, who disapproves of brooding as a foolish waste of time, has banished all misgivings about their imminent uprooting. Still, he confessed to me a few days earlier that he felt a pang as his prized roses started to leaf out. He will want a bit of dirt to fuss over.

At the nursery, I select lemon-yellow ranunculus, blue pansies, white impatiens, and a single periwinkle to spill over the edge of a big ceramic planter the color of cream. The rich black potting soil tumbles from bag to bowl. I carefully ease the flowers out of their plastic cubes and transplant them into the readied dirt, adding soil to fill in the empty spaces. I give the pot a gentle soaking. It looks perfect.

I arrive at the retirement home an hour before the movers and my in-laws are due. Yellow caution tape, the kind used in crime scenes, blocks the path to the 4- by 6-foot concrete pad we charitably call a patio. Perhaps the dismantling of a long life is indeed a crime, but I am too rushed to appreciate the symbolism.

I inquire at the front desk about the obstruction.

“Which unit are your in-laws moving into?” asks the receptionist.

“It’s on the end, overlooking the swamp,” I say.

“We don’t call it a swamp,” she admonishes before explaining that the path is cordoned off due to high tide warnings. “We say ‘marsh.’”

Since my in-laws refer to their fellow residents as “inmates,” I imagine them bristling at the euphemisms, if not the rising waters, about to engulf them. They may be old, but they’re nobody’s fools.

Swamp or marsh, it is clear that no senior citizens will be allowed to wander off into a flood zone, so I resign myself to a treacherous detour. Bracing against the weight of the pot, I gingerly pick my way across soggy hillocks toward the patio. A few more steps and I’ll be home free on the solid concrete.

As I bend to put the pot in place, it slips out of my arms. I watch helplessly, unable to reverse the inexorable crash. Dirt and ceramic shards are everywhere. The flowers I had so tenderly transplanted now lay crushed under two cubic feet of soil.

I pull the biggest shard from the rubble, frantically combing through the dirt with my bare hands. The sweet blue faces of the pansies emerge, and here is the tattered head of the ranunculus. One after another I toss the survivors onto the shard. It is a cool, overcast day; with enough soil clinging to their roots, perhaps the flowers will pull through.

But I cannot yet tend to the shocked transplants. I still have a “Welcome” banner to install, a mess to clean up.

I shake the dirt off my jeans and sneakers as best I can, and struggle to unlock the front door. My in-laws are zealously tidy; their new home, with all the charm of a chain motel, at least makes up in spotlessness what it lacks in character. Or at least it did before I tracked in dirt. Now the traces of my good intentions are ground into the carpet.

I affix the “Welcome” banner to the blank walls. Fishing a crumpled tissue out of my pocket, I blot up the mess as much as possible before finally turning my attention to the drooping plants.

Bare handed, I scoop up some of the soil from the patio into the plastic nursery pots, sweep the rest into the grass with the side of my foot, then head home with my load of distressed flowers and dirt.

There I find an old terra cotta pot, slightly battered, with a patina of dirt and mildew. Filling it almost to the brim with the salvaged potting soil, I carefully transplant each bedraggled flower, once again troweling in dirt around the edges, gently misting off stray soil before giving everything a good drink. The blossoms are wilted from their ordeal, but are starting to perk up a little.

I hope they’ll take root in their new home.

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I wrote this four years ago when my in-laws made their big move. They’ve taken root just fine, as has my father-in-law’s garden! 

Lurking with Intent to Mope

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dark_and_brooding_by_markeverard-d5juhy9

“Lurking with intent to mope.”

I burst out laughing when I heard this, even though I was listening to a Fresh Air tribute to David Carr, the New York Times reporter who died from cancer this week. Carr himself provided the laugh, quoting a police officer’s description of him during his years of crack addiction and petty crime. The cop was so tired of Carr being hauled in all the time that he looked up from his desk at the pathetic loser before him and said, “Oh, you again. What are you in for now? Oh, yeah–lurking with intent to mope.”

I can so relate. Not to the crack addict and petty criminal part, but to the wallow of self-pity. So all-encompassing. So hideous. So delicious. And as hard as any addiction to break.

It took cancer to break mine. Cancer is like a white-hot brush fire that burns away neurosis, leaving in its wake a deep appreciation and sharpened clarity about what matters. For a while, at least, it becomes very clear that life is just too short for lurking with intent to mope.

Cancer’s other lesson is that neuroses grow back faster than hair, so although I never brood like I used to,  I’m still an occasional contender.

I happened to hear David Carr’s interview on the first day of Lent, which gave me the inspiration I’d been seeking. As a lapsed Unitarian, I don’t really grok with the notion of self-sacrifice. But since I enjoy the camaraderie of commiseration, I like to cast about for something to give up. Not something impossible, like chocolate, mind you.

But lurking with intent to mope? I’ll try to forego it for forty-eight days.

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Can you relate to “lurking with intent to mope?”  What will you give up for Lent? 

Nature’s Valentine

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Plum Blossoms

Even though we are in the midst of a drought, the Japanese plums are blossoming. They always do this time of year: It’s Nature’s Valentine to Northern California.

To celebrate Valentine’s Day and my 60th birthday, my friend Mary and I went to Filoli the day before, on Friday the 13th. On the drive down, I passed a movie marquee advertising Fifty Shades of Grey. I listened to NPR, which featured holiday stories about polyamory and how Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Ebola zones. I felt a tad conventional (and very, very lucky) with my box of See’s chocolates for my husband all set for the big day. But soon I arrived in the staid territory of Filoli, a refuge for ladies who lunch. Their Valentine feature was fifty shades of camellias spilling out of teacups:

And, better than an assortment of chocolates, more of nature’s confections:

Daffodils

 HyacinthsMagnoliaHappy Valentine’s Day!

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How will you celebrate?

HPV: The Other Vaccine

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Source: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/Has anything been left unsaid in the uproar over vaccination since the measles outbreak? My little sleepy corner of the world, Marin County, has even been skewered by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for its high rate of personal-belief exemptions. Not since the peacock feathers and hottubs of the 70s have we been so subject to ridicule.

Yet one aspect of the vaccination debate deserves more attention. A local newspaper story provides a clue, quoting a parent who said, almost as an afterthought, “There are vaccines I didn’t do. I skipped the one related to sexually transmitted disease.”

She means the HPV vaccine, which protects against the human papilloma virus. HPV is the most common of all sexually transmitted infections. Although usually harmless, it can be far deadlier than the measles—HPV causes cervical and other cancers. In the United States, 12,000 are diagnosed with and 4,000 die from cervical cancer each year. Even those less drastically affected may suffer invasive testing, treatments, and anxiety. There is no way of knowing who will be afflicted or who will spread it to others.

But since 2006, it’s been possible to stay safe from the most serious strains of HPV. All it takes is three shots administered over six months to girls and boys around age 11, before they become sexually active.

You’d think parents would jump for joy at such an easy way to protect their children from getting or giving cancer. Yet even though the vaccines are highly safe and effective, a recent KQED report notes that based on 2011 data, the most current available, “Just 33 percent of girls and less than 7 percent of boys in the U.S. have gotten all three recommended doses.”  When it comes to HPV, there’s no ground zero like Marin County to mock for low immunization rates; they’re abysmal across the whole country.

Many parents fear that vaccinating against HPV condones early sexual behavior, despite evidence to the contrary. Even some doctors are reluctant to bring up the topic because of the link to sex. But such fears fly in the face of reality.

We can keep our heads in the sand and hope that nothing bad happens. Or we can keep our kids safe from cancer and other ills with the HPV vaccine.

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How will/did you choose? What do you think of the vaccination debate? 

For more on HPV and the HPV vaccine:

Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/vaccine.html 

KQED Forum: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201408040900

Dr. Jen Gunter, Ob-gyn who writes about women’s health: https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/tag/hpv-vaccine/

Groundhog Day: The Quintessential Holiday

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GroundhogGroundhog Day . . .  is a day celebrated on February 2. According to folklore, if it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, then spring will come early; if it is sunny, the groundhog will supposedly see its shadow and retreat back into its burrow, and the winter weather will persist for six more weeks.

–Wikipedia

We have made it through the holidays—relatives endured, credit cards maxed out, waistlines larded with latkes, and other wonders of the season.  We have turned the page on the old year, ushering in the new with high hope and resolve.

But now that we’ve paid that first installment on Visa and skipped a session or two at the gym (seriously, setting the alarm a half hour early–what were we thinking?), it’s time to get real.

That’s why I propose elevating Groundhog Day, which best represents who we are as a people, to the holiday status it deserves. Sure, the Fourth of July honors our penchant for blowing things up. And Thanksgiving is a strong contender with its non-denominational emphasis on food. But that gratitude thing can be a deal breaker for some.

Groundhog Day, on the other hand, is for everyone—those who are pulled kicking and screaming into the sunlight only to go back to bed, and those who find a silver lining in a cloudy day.

And that’s just the tradition built around a reluctant rodent prognosticator! The other reason why February 2 should be our national holiday is captured by the 1993 film, Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray hits the alarm each morning only to find he is trapped in the same dreary day as before.

Sound familiar?

Yet Groundhog Day goes on to transform the Myth of Sisyphus into an embodiment of that all-American saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” (Freudians, those jaded Old Worlders, call it repetition compulsion.)

The definition of insanity may be repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But these do-overs also give us a chance to get it right. Bill Murray, by dint of repetition and infinitesimal change, emerges from the winter of his discontent into the sunny skies of Andie MacDowell’s favor. Surely that is a model worth celebrating.

I forget what happens to the groundhog. Probably it bites somebody and goes back to sleep. Which is another holiday tradition we can all embrace.