Holy Spirit Portality

PTSD.

Hello old friends!

It’s been a long time. To be fair—I was on vacation for three of the last five weeks that I haven’t posted. Would you be writing blog posts from the Napa Valley, or the island of Kauai?

But I’ve missed you, and missed writing, though the longer I went, the harder it seemed to get back to. Not a case of too little to say, but too much—that old thing. Anyone who has ever heard a seminarian preach knows what I’m talking about.

Honestly, too, there was a lot of trauma on or around our vacation, and I knew I might have my lei revoked if I came home from 3 weeks in paradise and started complaining. But so it goes. Someone asked Peter recently how our vacation was, and he said, “Incredible! When it wasn’t awful.”

First, the incredible. Here’s a little peek into where we went, who we saw, and what we did:

Slate board full of yum, Boxing Day, Oakland, CA with Peter’s sisters, brothers, stepmom, nieces, nephews. Cousins rejoiced!

Fabulous brunch (yes! those are fries at breakfast) in Los Angeles with Aisha and Jeff. Do you see a theme emerging?

After hiking to the Hollywood sign (hard work! You can see the “D” behind us) with bestie Ish.

Making more good memories with my bestie Sarah in Napa Valley, and all our crazy and sweet kids and hubbies: 

Wine-tasting in Sonoma with my fabulous sibs in law Carmen and Brett, and one of their beauties:

n S

Tasting sparkling beverages on New Year’s Eve Day at Domaine Chandon winery, with sister Sammy and our friend Steve (another theme emerges…)

Then, on to Hawaii, where we relaxed:

Relaxed:

And relaxed: 

We did get a little bit of exercise. Biking the seaside path in Kapa’a town, with sweet Ambrosia snugged in with Carmen: 

Hiking Waimea Canyon: 

LOTS of snorkeling (sea turtles! butterflyfish! needlefish! humuhumunukunukupua’a!) and swimming:

Rafe and cousin Aqua (knuckles!) swimming the keiki ocean pool at our condo in Kapa’a Town.

There were also good times with the Olsen Ohana, on uncle Rich’s farm above Kealia Beach, eating corn he pulled off the stalk, warm in the husk, and jicama fresh from the ground:

And sister reunion—sweet Tess:

And more treats. Rafe scales his first shave ice, solo:

While Carmen tries to pass as a local:

Celebratory meal at a fancy restaurant with tiki torches (so cheesy, and so darn fun!):

And amidst our bacchanalia of mai tais and local organic yadda yadda food, nature would just stop us in our tracks periodically. Menehune Fish Pond, near Nawiliwili (a town so improbably and hilariously named that Peter wrote and recorded a song about it with the kids. Maybe I will ply him with beer and convince him to let me post it on the blog). 

Now, a little of the awful. The second day of vacation, I was giddy with leisure, jetlagged, confused by being in someone else’s space (my sister-in-law’s gorgeous house in the Oakland hills), and maybe the merest bit hung over on Sonoma zinfandel. I poured Carmen cow milk in her Cheerios. She had one bite, and clutched her throat in agony. We went to the ER. Three hours later, and two hours after they had administered all her meds (Epi-pen, Benedryl, Prednisone, Prilosec), her face blew up, like this:

They decided to keep her overnight for observation, because of the secondary reaction. We were far from the worst-off there. There were kids with masks on. Kids missing hair. Kids in oxygen tents. Kids who didn’t seem to have enough limbs, somehow. There were tubes and vitals checks and blood where there shouldn’t be blood. The whole event was traumatizing for Carmen, and re-traumatizing for me (too many hospitals!).

When her face first blew up like that, I started hyperventilating and sobbing, and didn’t stop sobbing for two hours. It is a terrible thing to have the power to kill your child because you reached for the wrong milk, absent-mindedly.

There were a lot of other big and little traumas on the trip. Among the biggest, news that someone very very dear to me was seriously contemplating taking her own life. She got help. I felt helpless, and far away, and scared for her. 

We came home to Post Terrific Stress Disorder: single-digit cold, then snow, then various people from my past as a pastor coming at me with all their crazy. This is a peril of ministry. When you leave a church, you establish the idea that people are not really to contact you—they are to bond with their new pastor. But if they leave the church first, then they can find you whenever, wherever they are in crisis—it’s on their terms. And how do you turn them away? It seems so cold-hearted, but I’ve tried to help many of them, and as I think I’ve probably said before here, it’s the people who most need help who are least able to be helped.

In the middle of all of this, I had my chemoversary. The end of chemo. I think it is testimony to the much smaller place that cancer is beginning to take up in my life, that I didn’t feel the need to blog on that day, or celebrate in a big way. The kids and Peter made me a card:

You can see Rafe got my scarred tear ducts anatomically correct.

The message reads: 

“Dear Mom,

(rafe) Last year was very hard on all of us. We were all glad when it ended. We’ll celebrate that day from now on. An Aniversery! much love, Rafael

(carmen) CARMEN

(peter) One down, 50 to go. Love, Me

Caring doctors
A lot of saddness
No fun
Caring family
Everyone hated it
Ruins our family 

(not to put too fine a point on it, eh?)

…And the kids bought me some earrings. We decided this will be our tradition from now on, on January 22 every year. I was hoping for a trip to Paris. But earrings are ok, too.

All of this trauma, and re-trauma, makes me realize something in a deep-down way that I only got intellectually before:  PTSD is real. And one of the ways we deal with it, is putting distance between ourselves and that which might re-traumatize us. I’ve said before that there were a couple people who took off when I was diagnosed, without a word, really.

I was really hurt, and angry at them. One was a cancer survivor herself, and one was widowed by cancer. I understood, intellectually, why they couldn’t watch me go through it. But I still wanted them to (wo)man up and acknowledge it to my face.

Now that I’m facing so much of other people’s trauma all at once myself, I get the need to flee. The night Carmen was in the hospital in Oakland, Peter relieved me at 4am so I could fly to Los Angeles and drink manhattans with my college roommates. What kind of a mother would do that? I said to myself. But I knew it was exactly what my spirit needed. I could get away, escape, unplug, regroup, and come back ready to feed Carmen another 23,375 meals (some of which will surely send her to the hospital), until she is 18 and on her own.

I wish I could formulate, on the year anniversary of my end-of-treatment, exactly what cancer taught me, and did for me. There’s still too much to make it a tidy blog post. But here are a couple of truths, that happen to conflict. Maybe that’s how this is going play. Every once in a while I can write a little equal-and-opposite Twin Truth of Cancer. Here’s #1: 

Cancer made me realize how fragile and wonderful life is. So I cherish it more. I watch my kids tenderly. I give high priority to activities that will make me laugh. I cry easily on behalf of other people. I feel things acutely.

Cancer also made me a narcissistic asshole. I survived. So far. And that just makes me want to party all the time! And not feel the bad things so acutely, and that means:  if I can’t naturally dial down the volume on my empathy for others in trauma, and I can’t sometimes, because of the way cancer reconfigured me, then I need to distance from it. This not as tricky as you might think with parishioners, who expect me to have a little professional distance. But it’s quite tricky with family and friends, who might feel let down if I’m not all up in it with them.

All this is to say to my friends who fled: I get it. I really, really get it. I’m not mad anymore. I really love you, and I’m so glad for all the years and memories we had, and maybe there will be more for us, but I’m not counting on it, and that’s ok.

 

Occupy/Bethlehem.

Last year, on this day, I was just getting out of the hospital, with a white blood cell count just over 500.

Last year, on this day, I was preparing for Christmas Eve services by making sure my surgical mask fit properly over my nose and mouth.

This year, I am fielding phone calls from families looking for financial assistance, setting up the dais for baby Jesus, praying with other people who are facing cancer treatment, writing liturgy for Christmas Eve.

I am stronger than ever before in my life, physically and otherwise. I am happier. I am calmer than ever before in my life.

Here’s a pic from last Friday’s flash mob—our church staged a little Occupy/Bethlehem fun in Davis Square, the village hub down the street from us.

For prettier pics, go see the gallery posted by our local newspaper, here. Yes, I got to be the Star of Bethlehem, trudging along with a cardboard “No Room at the Inn” sign, and set up the tent housing the Holy Family in full regalia. 

We wanted to stop people in their tracks, to disrupt their journey from here to there by giving them a pitstop in Bethlehem. A chance to think about their own power and powerlessness, joy and joylessness, where God might be getting in.

Today, I am cured, of so many things. Not of everything. Fighting a cold and a tummy bug, ironically. Probably with a white blood cell count of about 9,000, as my healthy body fights off an everyday illness. And grateful as all get out. And moving inexorably toward Bethlehem, with the smell of bacon in the air.

How about you? How can you occupy Bethlehem, the village whose name means “house of bread,” a place that implies warmth, good smells, nourishment—no matter WHAT is going on in your life at this moment?

Blessed Christmas, everybody.

Clean Scan #5.

You know when Dr. Butrynski’s face looks like this: 

…that the news is good. 

All clear, people! I am still, as far as the CT imaging machine can tell, cancer-free! Now, to revel…

Here are a few pics from earlier in the day. Checking in:

Drinking the kool-aid. Or in this case, Crystal Light raspberry and iced tea artificial flavored beverage, infused with contrast dye for optimal CT viewing:

In the exam room, waiting for Dr. B to walk through the door, to read his face: 

Thanks for the prayers. Back to dancing around the kitchen to Pandora Rockin’ Christmas Genre tunes!

love
Molly

Finally! I think this video will work. Kickin’ it old school—I just video’d the screen while playing the powerpoint. Hoo-ee technology! I thought you were supposed to make life easier…

My personal favorite virtue that Rafe has lifted up: “Molly has…a good taste of music!” 

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

Gosh. Last year on this day, I was in a hospital bed on the 6^th floor of the Brigham, streaming a lot of episodes of Lost, and feeling so, myself. Bald, scared, bored, sick, neutropenic, masked, confined to foods cooked literally to death, and wondering if I’d be home for Christmas. What a difference a year makes!

I’ve lamented here in these pages that I’m not the mother I’d imagine I’d be. I’m pretty darn good, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not the pillar of laughing patience, or wise boundary-setting-resolve, that the woman in my head is. I get tired and cranky, holler, nag. And not always in private.

The other night we were getting ready at church for our first-ever flash mob, organized by our new associate pastor, Jeff. Occupy/Bethlehem was going to take Davis Square by storm. Someone was going to video it. It was going to go viral. There would be press-conferences, a book deal for our church, grant money thrown at us so I’d never have to worry about another pledge drive. Or at least we would have a little (slightly embarrassing but mostly sweet) fun.

I wasn’t the organizer, just there to help with whatever, but found I was really anxious about how it was going to play out. And then Rafe was there, all awkward 4 feet 8 of him, trying to assemble a plastic shepherd’s crook, and, of course, using the shepherd’s crook as a ninja weapon all over the fellowship hall, complete with kung fu soundtrack.

The first time I told him to stop horsing around, I might have used my Wise, Patient, Laughing Mother alter ego. But the second and third and fourth (when he narrowly missed my eye) times, I just hollered myself silly. My parishioners gave me a wide berth. Mother-ministers? Can you relate, to your children behaving, well, like children, while you are in the public eye trying hard to be organized, cheerful and relaxed?

Then Rafe gave us his Christmas present to us yesterday, early. He’s been working covertly on it for the last two weeks, hunched over my computer. I thought it was cover for playing Planets vs Zombies. But then he showed us the powerpoint above.

We were laughing and crying, it was so sweet, funny and true. What an amazing thing, for a 9 year old boy to be able to see other people so clearly—to see their good, and tenderly and generously reframe their ugly. What a great gift, to be known by someone so well, and STILL be loved by them. This is God-love. She sees all your flaws, and shows them to you, but the view is delivered with such obvious warmth and tenderness that you can’t help but know you are loved, even as you are a little ashamed of your failings.

 Rafe is a superstar when it comes to loving the way God loves. With the ninja moves, he could use a little refinement, however.

I think everyone should have a powerpoint from God like this one, complete with applause track. You’d be amazed how much it really helps to hear that applause, even though it’s manufactured. I found myself blushing a little, mouthing, “for me, really? No, really, I so don’t deserve this.”

CT scan tomorrow! I am ready. Say a prayer for my church friend little baby Sammy, who is at Children’s Hospital, right around the corner from Dana Farber, with breathing issues. He’s likely stable, but still a scary time! He was Jesus in the Occupy/Bethlehem flash mob the other night (which went swimmingly, by the way, though the book deal hasn’t emerged yet)—let’s see him turn some of that miraculous healing on himself.

Love
Molly