My friend Michelle blogged about a young girl who lost her battle with cystic fibrosis last week, and I was drawn to her caringbridge site for so many different reasons. As a teacher, I’ve lost too many kids to tragedies–some in their control (drugs, car accidents) and some not (murder, cancer, cystic fibrosis). So when I see a courageous child fighting a horrible illness like cystic fibrosis and rallying an ever-expanding community of friends and family to believe in love and life and all that is good, I can’t help but join that community, join that rally, and pray for that child and her family.Haley Palmer is that young girl who died last week, but her community continues to celebrate her life and the lessons she taught all of us. Her memorial service was yesterday, and the Oklahoma city of Owasso was painted in pink–Haley’s favorite color–as a show of support in all that she believed in. A news report that aired last night featured Haley’s two younger sisters, who talked about her favorite quote:”Footsteps in history aren’t made sitting down.”

I did not know this young, courageous girl, but here in Baltimore, as I get ready for a busy but fun-filled day with my children, I take strength from Haley’s favorite quote.

Today, at 7:59 p.m. EST, marks the beginning of summer solstice, which literally translates to Standing-Still-Sun. It is the longest day of the year and the shortest night. Beginning tomorrow, the days will begin to get shorter and shorter until we reach winter solstice, on December 21, where the sun stands still once again.This is the earliest that summer solstice has occurred in 112 years–or since 1896. In my opinion, it’s the perfect occasion to mark the significance of Haley’s words.In mourning, we pause to reflect, to remember, to celebrate the life of a friend or loved one who has passed away. Our worlds stop, or stand-still, during this time, and we shift our priorities to embrace what we believe to be most important in life.

Thousands of years ago, individuals used to do the same thing during the solstice, where they would stop and take stock of the things they may have taken for granted or neglected. This is especially true during winter solstice, when in BCE times, individuals believed that the Gods were so angry with them that they decided to take away their sun. It wasn’t until a few days after winter solstice (around the 25th of December) that they realized that light was returning (the days were getting noticeably longer), and the celebration began that, once again, the Gods forgave them for all that they had neglected and taken for granted.

So maybe today–tonight especially–is the right time for us to take Haley’s words to heart. As the sun-stands-still at 7:59 p.m., maybe we can make those personal resolutions to get up and resume making our footsteps in history.

It doesn’t matter how you do it. A call to a nephew, a visit with Dad, even a return to a memoir piece you started years ago. Whatever it is, get up. Don’t let the sun go down on you. Take some steps. Make some history.

LIVE. LOVE. GROW.

(picture taken at Loch Raven Reservoir, 6/19/08, as my children fed bread to the Canadian geese)

I feel like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, though I just got all my hair chopped off today and I can’t do that mad laugh that he does so, so well.

All else, though, applies. Me -n- my Mac, we’re Puttin’ on the Ritz.

Here’s the background: I bought my G4 Titanium Powerbook at the end of the first week in October of 2001. It was a brisk autumn afternoon, and I remember leaving with my new Powerbook, clutching it as if it were the baby that would be born to us just two weeks later.

Madelyn just turned six, and as she now dances ever-so freely and innocently in this early evening, this eve before we finally turn our clocks back an hour, I write this entry on my Powerbook, a loved and worn friend resembling the Velveteen Rabbit more than anything else. The sound doesn’t work, the cd drive is cracked but usable, the firewire port is no longer on fire, and the battery has long since overheated and sports black singed marks where it just couldn’t give anymore.

It includes a 10-gig hard drive (stop that snickering!). Yet, I have successfully resuscitated it with a gig and a half to spare. I’ve got my essential software loaded, and a core 37 songs on iTunes that, when I twist the earbuds just right, I can hear Dylan, Zep, and Jerry G reminding me that the music never stops, and every little thing’s gonna be all right.

I just ordered the brand new battery pack, the one that I should have received for free when the recalls went out years ago. I saved nearly $50 on eBay (reliable seller; otherwise, I would have never taken the chance), and it should be here by Wednesday.

I’ve priced portable external hard drives, and i can get a fine 120-gig Iomega portable drive for $129, which I’ll get in the next week or so. It’s got a USB drive, so I don’t have to worry about the fire-less firewire…

This, I hope, will last until Madelyn begins 1st grade next August, when I’ll have the money to get my new Powerbook.

But that will be a bittersweet moment for me. It will be nice to have all the new technology, the DVD-R drive, the 17-inch laptop screen, and all the speed and space I’ll ever need to write and design. What I will mourn, though, is the passing of this old laptop, my friend, my brother-at-my-side since before my daughter was born. We have been through over 75 original pieces of writing that have found their way in print, and countless other ideas that continue to develop on and off this screen. We have spent marathon writing sessions in myriad coffee houses and cafes, learned of breaking news–both good and horrific–as it developed online, and of course, shared my life as it unfolded as well with all of you in this blog.

I hope my laptop, my friend, holds up until next August. He is as a part of my muse as my daybook, and I look forward to this Swan Song Run for the next 10 months as I work on another book, share my life with you, and celebrate life as I’ve never celebrated it before.

Blueberries for Sal….Do you remember reading this book when you were younger?

I have wonderful memories of my mother reading this book to me before I had learned to read. I remember asking her to read it over and over again so I could memorize the text that went along with the pictures. I wish I still had my copy of this book. I am sure that it was nothing more than a book-of-the-month knock off (it was originally published in 1948), but that wouldn’t matter to me. Just having that copy that my mother and I shared every night would be one of those silly priceless things I’d keep on my bookshelf.

We decided to take a ride up to Shaw Orchard just over the Maryland/Pennsylvania border. It’s nearing the end of blueberry picking season, and we wanted to get in our annual harvest before it was too late.

The weather could not have been better. It had just rained, and the temperature was a cool 71 degrees. The wind waved across the endless fields of corn and soy beans as we picked nearly 9 pounds of blueberries.

As we were in the fields, though, there was plenty of time to reflect about the stories my mom used to read to me, the times we would spend picking all kinds of fruits and vegetables at similar farms throughout the state, and the quiet times we would share at our cabin in River Hills, PA.

Tonight, we ate fresh corn and string beans (marinated in olive oil, garlic, and a pinch of salt), jasmine rice with a fresh homemade roasted tomato spread, and of course, blueberries. We finished the meal with a homemade peach cobbler pie. Everything but the rice came from Shaw Orchard…we could not have had a better fresh meal on a cool summer’s night.

But still, the memories linger of time spent with Mom. I miss her greatly.

This day, with each of its moments slowing to the length of no less than an hour, punctuated by the reverberating beat of my heart, a pulsed give-and-receive of life running through me and back again. And again. And again still one. more. time.

This day, where I began stuck in melancholy, missing my mother taken by cancer just 18 days ago, or 432 hours, or 25,920 beats of my heart, that give-and-receive sorrow that doesn’t know how to stop me from picking up the phone to just say hi.

I heard the rain hitting the spring Oaks and Maples, and Mom, all I could think about was you and me, sitting right there on the porch with tape recorder in hand, listening to the sounds of the spring storm bring its thunder and its rain to us as we talked quietly and away from the microphones.

This day, where another friend went into the hospital for a double mastectomy to try and beat that cancer, beat it all away, beat it back and off and into the no-mores of her life and the lives of her husband and small children.

It was back on June 14, 2006 that my sister received her first drops of chemo, just after 1 a.m., and she and her husband held hands and acknowledged the tough road ahead of them. The chemo would be tough–tougher than anything she experienced 16 years ago when all this started. My brother-in-law started sending out email updates to the whole family, and we waited eagerly for the next one to come along.

Since then, she has battled hard, died twice and then revived, fought the odds, no matter how bad they looked.

Since then, Mom lost her battle, our friend begins hers, and I shame myself for not making better choices in my life and still being afforded a happy lifestyle and relatively good health.

So tonight, amidst these feelings of I Don’t Know What running through my head, my heart, my me, I get two emails just minutes apart from each other.

The first is from my brother-in-law, with the unbelievable news that my sister just took her last drip of chemo, and she is done. Finally done with the treatments, the surgeries, the life-threatening side effects, the nausea, the quarantines, the everything else we as healthy beings can never begin to understand, to appreciate what it means to go through that and still come out on the other side loving life more than we have ever known possible.
On the heels of reading this, my sister calls, and I am reduced to moments of silence as I try to not lose it over the phone. She is free of treatment! She is alive, is grateful, is full of life and of resolve. I tell her I love her, hang up the phone, and open my second email.

It is much like my Brother-in-law’s first note or two that he sent out nearly a year ago. It is heavy with hope, laced with exhaustion and fear. They are at the beginning of their long road, where somewhere in that forest of fear and courage and all that is unknown lies the secret to embracing the genuine meaning of life.

The cycle continues. As my sister’s IV dries, another one begins its drips, and all we can do is continue to pray. to offer strength. to throw out love. to believe that celebration is not about what may someday be but what is at this moment, this hour-long beat of time that we were never meant to squander or let pass by without even a glimpse of thanks, of hope, of belief.

We are here this moment, this beat. For each of us, may we find the way to treasure the quarter notes within, the eighths, the sixteenths, and recognize the wonderful energy each holds, no matter where we are along the journey.

Greetings, all:

First, let me thank all of you for your kind words, your emails, your cards, your everything. I am honored to know all of you, whether it be in person or online. All of you have made this passing much easier to bear, and I am very grateful.

With each day that has passed since the funeral, I have felt the rush of emotions coming and going with no rhyme, no reason, no warning. But today, I immersed myself in myriad projects that made me feel good. I constructed the trampoline for my kids. We bought various yard ornaments and bird feeders to bring some new life to this once-tired yard.

In other words, I began my return to living fully with my family, to writing genuinely for me, to working on the final production needs for my book.

I’m emerging from the sorrow and am living my life a little more simply, a little more purposefully, a little more beautifully.

It’s a good feeling.

I’m taking a step back, though, and taking inventory of a few things. My health, my career in education, my general workload, what brings me energy and what takes it away….I’m taking a step back and thinking about how all of these things work together–or don’t.

I don’t know. It’s a good time to do this, though. It’s not like when I was 24 and my father died and I went charging through this life barbarically yawping Carpe Diem up and down the east coast. Times are different now. I’ve got a family, and I’m 42. When Dad died I could have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Today, I struggle to make it around the block without feeling some kind of pain in my back or my legs due to my excessive weight.

So, times have changed, and they continue to change. But, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late to make a shift in my thinking and in my actions to bring about a better life for me and for those around me. I’d like to think that I still have a lot of living left to do, and taking care of myself is the first step in making it easier for me to do everything else.

So, I’m back. Back to the blog, back to the daybook, back to the classroom. I’m back to living, and I’m back to loving. I’m resurfacing with a new look on life, and with a greater appreciation for this time we have here on earth.

Let’s all enjoy it together as peacefully and as fully as we may be able to do in the coming days, months, and years, God willing.

Love to all,

Rus

My children do a wonderful job of informing me after the fact when it is “opposite” day. You can imagine what it’s like, being asked a bunch of loaded questions, answering in the negative on every occasion, and then being told that it’s opposite day, and I’ve just given them the right to eat a gallon of ice cream, stay up until midnight, and install a surround-sound dvd stereo system in their room.

Of course, none of these things actually happen as they might wish, and they know they won’t. They just like to offer a good “Gotcha!” whenever they can. It’s in that moment, though, when the possibility exists for them, and the suspended belief occurs for me, that is priceless. That transition of thought, that split-second of Just Maybe.

This is the way I feel on Thanksgiving day. Every year, I enter this four-day break feeling like I’m in that transition. Possibility exists for so much to happen. Reality as I have known it is suspended indefinitely, and myriad thoughts of a simpler life rush through my mind.

This must be the same experience a turkey feels when it flies from one feeding place to another. A good turkey flight can top speeds of 50 miles per hour, but they are not built for the long run; endurance is not their thing. Flying is a matter of survival for them, or at the very least, a quick bus that carries them from lunch to dinner.

Today, I am flying. There are three more days ahead of me, and a good lot of hours remaining in this first day. In mid-air, I imagine the possible ways to simplify my life, to be with my kids more, to lose the weight I absolutely must, must lose.

I imagine the life I always dreamed I might someday have.

And in that flight, in these days that will pass, all things may seem more possible than ever before. Every ounce of me will believe this. I will believe this flight to be forever. The endurance flight, if you will. Destination: Eternity.

But in a few days my kids will come up to me and pull a “Gotcha!” They’ll tell me the ride’s over, it was really opposite vacation after all, and there are no real ways to simplify right now. There are no possible ways to lose weight, despite the myriad meaningful reasons to lose a good 100 pounds.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll be the turkey that doesn’t stop for dinner and goes a little farther into the night, facing daybreak head on.

Maybe these four days are the beginning of that enduring journey.

All I can do is hope, keep flapping my wings, and stay in the air…

May all of you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Love to all,

Rus

On this Sunday Morning, I think not of the back-to-school meetings that have passed, of the 30 or so reviews for my book Cold Rock that are now trickling in, of the passing anniversaries of my father’s birthday or his marriage to my mother 62 years ago, of the many meetings with students and parents and teachers that have focused on all the right things in this early school season, of my younger daughter’s first days in preschool and her first practices in soccer, of my love for autumn.

I think not of any of those things.

I think of This Sunday Morning. The possibility of love and of life suspended in each drop of dew that droops from tired Black-Eyed Susans and Butterfly Bushes outside my window. The magic of the many micro-moments that make up this single passing second, this moment, this chance to smile and to listen and to cherish simply what is.

This Sunday Morning. This Sunday Moment.

It is good to be back here.

In this Moment.

With all of you.

Greetings, all…

Thanks so much for all of your kind wishes and prayers. i am happy to report that Cindy is out of surgery and doing phenomenally well….Here’s the news straight from my brother-in-law:

“Cindy is now in recovery and things could not have gone better. The surgeons just met with me and they are confident that they successfully removed all of the cancer in her leg (though she will still have a few more months of chemo to ensure a stray cell or two did not spread). They stated that it was a very successful surgery.

“Cindy will undergo plastic surgery in a couple of days. She will need to have skin grafts to completely close the wound.

“Cindy will begin to walk in a couple of days. She will be in a knee immobilizer for several months and they are hoping she will eventually have a full range of motion in her knee, but it is not guaranteed. She will be walking with a walker for about three months, followed by a cane for another three months. With luck, she will be able to discard the cane after that. Cindy will always have a limp, but who cares? She will have two legs and no cancer. What could be better?

“Thank you to all of you who offered your prayers and positive thoughts to help us get to this point. We are absolutely convinced that you were a key ingredient in the success we will celebrate today, tonight and tomorrow.”

We couldn’t be happier here in Baltimore as well…

Greetings, all:

Well, my sister has her big surgery today. 16 years ago she battled lymphoma, and now she is battling cancer that she received from the treatments she underwent from that first fight. For the last four months, she has been undergoing intense and very painful chemo treatments, leaving her in the hospital for a week at a time with each cycle. It has been a tough road for her.

Hopefully, today’s surgery will be the big step she needs to finally put much of this behind her.

Originally, they were simply going to amputate her leg to save her life, but thanks to some unbelievable research that’s been conducted, tested, and proved worthy, she will have much of her femur bone removed, her entire knee (this is where the cancer is centralized) and have it all replaced with titanium rods and bones from donors. They expect that she’ll be walking within 24 hours of the surgery, and she should be home by the end of next weekend.

That’s if all goes well. There’s still the chance that they will have to take the leg during the operation, but the doctors seem pretty confident that won’t be the case. Let’s hope so.

Like I’ve said in so many posts, Cindy’s such an inspiration. When talking to her on the phone today, I was amazed by her calm composure, her optimistic thinking about the way life will be a year from now, and just her overall reaction to all that has happened to her. She’ll be in surgery for about 6 or 7 hours, and that alone is enough to send any of us into a bit of a frenzy.

But not Cindy. She’s just that strong, and she’s embraced life that willfully.

Here’s to her and to a good story coming out of the surgery.

I love you, Cindy.

I’ll post an update later tonight when I get any news. Thanks, all, for keeping her and my family in your thoughts.

It’s been a few days since I’ve posted. I think the whole water-in-the-basement thing took more out of me than I realized….

I’m back though, and happy to be so. :)

Blessings. I made the decision today (and not lightly) to join Team In Training to cycle the Seagull Century along Maryland’s Eastern Shore on October 7 for my sister, C-Loo. I’ve been hit a little with sadness that I am not with her as she is going through these horrific treatments, but I realized today that such sadness is not doing her any good. I’ve spent the last few days sulking about our distance from each other, and now’s the time to focus on what I can do and not what I cannot do.

Going through the team in training website, I started reading the stories in their mosaic, and although they were all incredible to read, one in particular stood out. Here’s the quote she ends her story with: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift - that’s why it’s called the present.”

I know there are many people who have gone through chemo and have not had the most upbeat attitude. It’s a tough thing to do, and especially for so long. That’s why I am continually amazed by the strength and the courage and the inspirational words that flow from these amazing, blessed people.

As I was working out tonight, I kept thinking about all of them–the whispers of the millions of unknown sufferers that are doing more with their lives than I could ever imagine. It made me push a little harder, and I reached a point where I think I understood how hard it is to do what is right for you and for your loved ones.

What’s that great line from A League Of Their Own?

“It’s supposed to be hard. The Hard is what makes it great. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would be doing it.”

True, but I think that if everyone understood the benefits of such hard work, there’d be a lot less grief going on around us.

Love yourself so that you may better love others. And face those hardships and see what awaits you on the other side of those treatments.

Absolute Heaven. . . .