Determination

This past weekend I visited my dad in Southern California. He misses me a lot (even when I'm not sick!), but with all his independence and good health, he is in his eighties, so it's usually easier to bring the mountain to Muhammad.

It was a fairly aggressive weekend, starting with rushing across town last week to make it from the hospital to the airport in time. The busy, sundrenched schedule of events incorporated two church performances, a twilight, windswept hike across the Santa Rosa Plateau, two very attractive (if unfortunately tasteless) meals, and a whole heck of a lot of road time. Oh yes...and some R&R: transcriptions and compositions, pecking at the piano, playing with a good friend's 7-month old, researching for my fall travel adventures.

The steroids have me so sped up that sleep is short, rare, and restless.

On Sunday, I visited my aunt and uncle. I am very close to them; they have been a second set of parents to me since childhood. Among many other specific and general life lessons imparted over the years, my aunt taught me to cook: not just the mechanics, but the art. That an orange-colored lemon is the sweetest, and that rolling it around on the counter before slicing it makes it that much juicier. To use ice water when making pastry crusts for the ultimate melt-in-your-mouth flakiness. To ask at the meat counter for extra innards to blend and simmer up for the giblet gravy at Thanksgiving. To clean as you go to avoid a big kitchen mess greeting you after dinner's over. The magic of timing all the dishes just right (I still struggle with that one!). My aunt's cooking was legendary, particularly the deftness with which she processed the hundreds of pounds of peaches produced by a single backyard dwarf tree: sliced, frozen, and in shakes, cobblers, and pies by the dozen - one year, she famously mixed gallons of peach filling in the bathtub.

Not long ago, my aunt discovered she had a brain tumor, and went through radiation and surgery to treat it. It took much from her, perhaps more emotionally than functionally, even. Her recovery has been slow, fitful, frustrating. My uncle has heroically and selflessly, unhesitatingly devoted his every waking moment to her progress and care, dueling with insurance companies and hospitals, out-researching the doctors, marshalling a small army of caregivers and specialists, and always pushing, pushing, pushing. He has never stopped believing, even when the family, and my aunt herself, despaired.

I try to sidestep any despair of my own treatment. Dealing daily with the unremitting and unpredictable barrage of my side effects, short- and long-term, it is not always easy. I push myself, sometimes almost too much. I try, I tell myself with success, to distract myself with various flavors of busyness. By scheduling activities I "can't" cancel. By forcing myself to take care of myself - walk to and from the shuttles and trains and buses and not take a taxi; walk or bike to get groceries and not order in; do my laundry and keep my room clean and wash the dishes. And some hours, days, or weeks definitely feel more comfortably "normal" than others.

Sometimes, though, it's an immense struggle just to go from horizontal to vertical. To crawl across the floor to take my morning or evening medications. To force down the nausea and greet people pleasantly, to concentrate in a meeting when my mouth is on fire, to walk the next four blocks when my heart is pounding and my head is reeling, to ignore the lingering pain of an operation scar or metal port under the chafe of a backpack or the cutting strap of a heavy bag.

And yet - as my aunt so aptly put it, "You can walk." For all the mind-over-matter I've employed over the past few weeks - it's only been a few weeks, and my impairment's been limited. She has a much longer road to travel, and her progress is necessarily so much slower. And I cannot express how heart-burstingly proud I am of my aunt, and her resolve, and her progress. Every action, no matter how seemingly small, a firm grip in the morning, an eye blinking on command, a few bites of real food, a trip - via sling and wheelchair and uncle and caregiver - outside, to sit for a moment in the sun - it is a milestone, an achievement thought unaccomplishable just a few months ago. And each miracle only strengthens the resolve and the impatience to achieve the next.

It would be unconscionably arrogant of me to say, If I can make it, then you can. Instead, it is this: If you can make it - you! - then what the heck is holding me back?! What excuse do I have?

This one's for you - both of you. We have so much living left to do...all three of us. I can't wait.