lemon cake
I recently got in touch with a friend from a long time ago--really, lifetimes ago, back when I was a young graduate student at Princeton, about to make a series of decisions (to marry young, to have my first child, to move across the country away from my PhD program) that would set me off down a road of motherhood and work that roll up to the fact that I have never, not once in my life, gone on any vacation by myself, let alone leave my family for ten days, as I am about to do when I go to California for a cancer retreat. But I digress, as per usual. The friend wrote me back and said something like I hope when I reach the end of my days I also--hold up, who the hell cares what else he said, the end of my days? does he think I'm at the end of my days? Because I don't think I'm at the end of my days.
Or is this like people yelling support on the sidelines near the end of the marathon: people who cheerfully trill out "you're almost there!"-- a sentiment which would fill me with irrational anger: don't tease me like that, it's only mile 25 and there is over a mile left and that last mile, oh the last mile of a marathon can be so damn hard, nothing like mile one, or seven or even fourteen. Is it like that? Am I essentially at the end of my days and it's splitting hairs of me to say I'm not, because six months here, six months there, I should be starting to look for lights and tunnels?
I heard an interview with Gloria Steinem last week. She was 81at the time of the interview (she's 84 now) and she said she fully plans to live to 100. She's not done yet, not in the least, and didn't think 81 was a time for dying. And listening to her disembodied voice on the radio, there were no clues that Gloria was anything but fully in life--she could have been 30, or 50, or 80. Is Gloria at the end of her days? Someone should yell that out to her, because what with her travel schedule and her book and her interviews, she's acting like she's not a day over, what? 70? 60? I have lost track of what is old, and when it is time for dying.
Anyhow, back to that retreat. I'm going to a place called Commonweal, and you can look it up and you'll see that it's deeply hippy, green, zen--yoga and meditation and discussions about death and nutrition (this is kind of full on catastrophe living, where you eat carefully to put your body in the right place for healing, but also converse freely about death), and something called sandtraying (more on that in a moment), and I wouldn't be going if it was not for the deep generosity of my dear friends and relatives who took up a collection box and paid for the trip and the airline tickets and made it all completely easy and possible.
I really want to go and I'm terrified of going. I would have first said I can't possible go away like that because we can't afford it. It's too much on top of everything else we have going on here, but my dear friends Roz and Alison said no, your friends would love to do this for you, and they asked and people were so generous and kind and there, I was signed up.
I worried about leaving the kids for that long, but Kyle and Kim said no, Trace, we've really got this. You can go off in peace.
Which just left me and my anxiety.
I first signed up for this retreat about a year ago, when I was still in shock from the diagnosis, and was put on the waitlist. And you know, if an opening had been made available to me a year ago, I would have been too sad and scared to leave my family. At the time, I really felt I was at the end of my days and I may not have had the wherewithal to leave my family for a week with strangers, no matter how edifying. A year into this and I'm clearly closer to my death now than then, but I have made some peace with the diagnosis, and I think it's okay to go.
I think.
What am I afraid of?
So here's the premise. 6 to 8 people for a week at Point Reyes, which is beautiful, on the ocean. I think comfortable but not fancy quarters. Plant-based--I feel like that is the new way to say vegetarian, or maybe it's more nuanced than that--meals. Group work and individual sessions. Massage and yoga. Sandtraying, which is where you have a tray of sand (no kidding) and an array of object and you place them in your tray and then talk about why you picked what you picked. I worry I will laugh inappropriately during sandtraying. I laughed the first time I took yoga, too.
I think I am a little afraid of being away from my family--I have never been because for one, I don't have that thing that other people have--a kind of wanderlust and the desire to travel widely. For another, the grand intersections of money and responsibility never quite lined up right. I was pregnant by the time I was 24, and it turned out that one thing my then-husband and I did not do with one, then two, then three and four children, was travel the world. Later, if you had four or five children, and law school debt, and college on the horizon, it was very simple not to go to Paris. And then, I had the twins, and again, it seemed impossible. I don't regret a life devoted to making people, and the care and feeding of said people. I'm trying to explain why I am 52 and haven't seen too much of this earth.
Sometimes I say I wish I had been to Paris, and sometimes I think about being outside on the wild coasts of Scotland or Ireland. But traveling seems luxurious and wildly complicated because of the boys, and the money and the illness, and I am at peace with not doing those things as well.
I think I am more afraid of really going deep with my fears and anxieties about cancer. Sometimes in group when someone goes deep, when we move away from laughing about marijuana or commiserating about things an oncologist has said, or made light of things that aren't light at all, and suddenly someone is sharing how very afraid of death he still is, or how fearful she is of being in pain, the group gets quiet and so cautious with each other. I am afraid that the retreat won't have the levity I need to balance the darkness and I will open myself up to share my fears and won't be able to close myself back up again. There. That's it, I think. I'm afraid of finding out how scared I truly am, and that, being out on a ledge built of fear, I won't be able to find my way back home.
What will I find when I have the time and the place to discover what is really there, what really ails me, aside from the obvious. A willingness to be open with our collective selves must be, in some way, what motivates me and others to attend a retreat where our only purpose is to learn about intentional healing, to give space to suffering, to allow what is uncomfortable, what is angering, what is terrifying, what gives rise to anxiety. There will be joy and wonder and there will be pain and anguish. I think. The idea of the retreat means no part of who we are and what we are experiencing will be left out.
I need to trust in the place, I suppose. I need to think about massages and the California surf. I need to remember that all of you who are sending me out into the world will be here when I return. I need to believe that the tension and holding I use to forge an armor of resilience and good cheer is not what makes me invulnerable.
Deep breath and in the meantime.
I made a delightful lemon cake this week with farm share zucchini. I really can't recommend it enough--it's delicious and easy and pretty enough to be taken to a picnic or a brunch.
Here's the link:
https://www.mybakingaddiction.com/lemon-zucchini-cake/
Think of me silently giggling into the sleeve of my 100% cotton shirt while I enter the sandtraying room next week in California while you eat your lemon cake.
And on the topic of the etymology of wherewithal: It was used in 1662 in the Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 119:9;
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
Seems perfect.
Or is this like people yelling support on the sidelines near the end of the marathon: people who cheerfully trill out "you're almost there!"-- a sentiment which would fill me with irrational anger: don't tease me like that, it's only mile 25 and there is over a mile left and that last mile, oh the last mile of a marathon can be so damn hard, nothing like mile one, or seven or even fourteen. Is it like that? Am I essentially at the end of my days and it's splitting hairs of me to say I'm not, because six months here, six months there, I should be starting to look for lights and tunnels?
I heard an interview with Gloria Steinem last week. She was 81at the time of the interview (she's 84 now) and she said she fully plans to live to 100. She's not done yet, not in the least, and didn't think 81 was a time for dying. And listening to her disembodied voice on the radio, there were no clues that Gloria was anything but fully in life--she could have been 30, or 50, or 80. Is Gloria at the end of her days? Someone should yell that out to her, because what with her travel schedule and her book and her interviews, she's acting like she's not a day over, what? 70? 60? I have lost track of what is old, and when it is time for dying.
Anyhow, back to that retreat. I'm going to a place called Commonweal, and you can look it up and you'll see that it's deeply hippy, green, zen--yoga and meditation and discussions about death and nutrition (this is kind of full on catastrophe living, where you eat carefully to put your body in the right place for healing, but also converse freely about death), and something called sandtraying (more on that in a moment), and I wouldn't be going if it was not for the deep generosity of my dear friends and relatives who took up a collection box and paid for the trip and the airline tickets and made it all completely easy and possible.
I really want to go and I'm terrified of going. I would have first said I can't possible go away like that because we can't afford it. It's too much on top of everything else we have going on here, but my dear friends Roz and Alison said no, your friends would love to do this for you, and they asked and people were so generous and kind and there, I was signed up.
I worried about leaving the kids for that long, but Kyle and Kim said no, Trace, we've really got this. You can go off in peace.
Which just left me and my anxiety.
I first signed up for this retreat about a year ago, when I was still in shock from the diagnosis, and was put on the waitlist. And you know, if an opening had been made available to me a year ago, I would have been too sad and scared to leave my family. At the time, I really felt I was at the end of my days and I may not have had the wherewithal to leave my family for a week with strangers, no matter how edifying. A year into this and I'm clearly closer to my death now than then, but I have made some peace with the diagnosis, and I think it's okay to go.
I think.
What am I afraid of?
So here's the premise. 6 to 8 people for a week at Point Reyes, which is beautiful, on the ocean. I think comfortable but not fancy quarters. Plant-based--I feel like that is the new way to say vegetarian, or maybe it's more nuanced than that--meals. Group work and individual sessions. Massage and yoga. Sandtraying, which is where you have a tray of sand (no kidding) and an array of object and you place them in your tray and then talk about why you picked what you picked. I worry I will laugh inappropriately during sandtraying. I laughed the first time I took yoga, too.
I think I am a little afraid of being away from my family--I have never been because for one, I don't have that thing that other people have--a kind of wanderlust and the desire to travel widely. For another, the grand intersections of money and responsibility never quite lined up right. I was pregnant by the time I was 24, and it turned out that one thing my then-husband and I did not do with one, then two, then three and four children, was travel the world. Later, if you had four or five children, and law school debt, and college on the horizon, it was very simple not to go to Paris. And then, I had the twins, and again, it seemed impossible. I don't regret a life devoted to making people, and the care and feeding of said people. I'm trying to explain why I am 52 and haven't seen too much of this earth.
Sometimes I say I wish I had been to Paris, and sometimes I think about being outside on the wild coasts of Scotland or Ireland. But traveling seems luxurious and wildly complicated because of the boys, and the money and the illness, and I am at peace with not doing those things as well.
I think I am more afraid of really going deep with my fears and anxieties about cancer. Sometimes in group when someone goes deep, when we move away from laughing about marijuana or commiserating about things an oncologist has said, or made light of things that aren't light at all, and suddenly someone is sharing how very afraid of death he still is, or how fearful she is of being in pain, the group gets quiet and so cautious with each other. I am afraid that the retreat won't have the levity I need to balance the darkness and I will open myself up to share my fears and won't be able to close myself back up again. There. That's it, I think. I'm afraid of finding out how scared I truly am, and that, being out on a ledge built of fear, I won't be able to find my way back home.
What will I find when I have the time and the place to discover what is really there, what really ails me, aside from the obvious. A willingness to be open with our collective selves must be, in some way, what motivates me and others to attend a retreat where our only purpose is to learn about intentional healing, to give space to suffering, to allow what is uncomfortable, what is angering, what is terrifying, what gives rise to anxiety. There will be joy and wonder and there will be pain and anguish. I think. The idea of the retreat means no part of who we are and what we are experiencing will be left out.
I need to trust in the place, I suppose. I need to think about massages and the California surf. I need to remember that all of you who are sending me out into the world will be here when I return. I need to believe that the tension and holding I use to forge an armor of resilience and good cheer is not what makes me invulnerable.
Deep breath and in the meantime.
I made a delightful lemon cake this week with farm share zucchini. I really can't recommend it enough--it's delicious and easy and pretty enough to be taken to a picnic or a brunch.
Here's the link:
https://www.mybakingaddiction.com/lemon-zucchini-cake/
Think of me silently giggling into the sleeve of my 100% cotton shirt while I enter the sandtraying room next week in California while you eat your lemon cake.
And on the topic of the etymology of wherewithal: It was used in 1662 in the Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 119:9;
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
Seems perfect.
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