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The Beginning and the End

This weekend I will host a studio sale and let go of a good portion of my private collection of art.

Over the years, I have saved one work from each period in my career, the above being one of them.

The purpose for this sale is twofold:

One is to purchase a van to house a power wheelchair.

This is a remarkable transition time; some good some questionable but CHANGE, she be comin’ on fast…

The second, and perhaps more important reason to offer my work in this way is the pure joy of making my work available outside a gallery at prices which allow many of the people I know and love to have the experience of taking something beautiful home with them. They will leave with the knowledge they are supporting me in my new life in partnership with a wheelchair.

I am SO looking forward to letting all this art I have loved, go to new homes!

Interestingly, I am no longer attached to them as I once was.

They will have new lives in new places and I will be left in the space between; the room created as I let a huge piece of history go (because I love it) and welcome the vacuum created by it’s loss.

It is a win-win-win situation for the art itself, the person taking it home and for me as well.

Funny, how I thrived on my relationship to these pieces of art for so long and then.. their time with me is over…

I am sssssssooooooo glad I KNOW when to let go in this case.

The freedom is perfectly thrilling.

Backbone

This journey with MS as a partner is not for the faint of heart to be sure.

When your hearts’ light goes dim, one must rely on backbone strength.

Hopefully, and thankfully in my case, I seem to carry some kind of reserve there, in my backbone.

I’m speaking metaphorically of course but I really think were they to test the bone density back there, mine would blow them away.

We all.. all of us in the MS contingent, have backbone.

It comes, I think, from living in the unknown.

We count on CHANGE as the most reliable event in our lives.

Yep, this ain’t no game for wimps.

Usually, I’m prone to go galloping off to the high road and find the little place inside this challenge that actually DOES move me toward WHOLE depending on my point-of-view.

Today, I am just going to let myself rest in what IS… not expend any energy moving it toward any other nicer ground.

My optimism saves me.

And changes me.

And I am blessed beyond words to have it.

But today..today I am just to damn spent to do any psychic machinations to locate the rose colored glasses though I know I look really good in them..

Today, I will let my friend drive me to a doctors’ appointment with the wheelchair waiting when we get there because there are too many long halls to negotiate and I will let her push me (new experience for us) to the office,

I will lay out my full history once again like an outfit on the bed before school the next day.

I’ll brave the horrid fluorescent lights and perhaps prickly nurses’ assistant and become my best advocate one more time.

Because we always need practice, don’t we?

And THEN I’ll have lunch with two new and fabulous friends who I am beginning to love already.

They also have BACKBONE as well as Primary Progressive MS.

They are gorgeously ALIVE and GENUINE and BEAUTIFUL and SMART!

Except when they’re not..

I feel grateful, once again. to share this particular road of mine because after all is said and done, it is THE THEATER OF THE ABSURD to be sure but how utterly fabulous to turn just barely to my side and feel the preciousness of EMPATHY, COMPASSION and the gift of gifts: BEING SEEN TRULY!

Because, now and only now am I able to come forward without a costume.

The raw and new and alien skin of a woman becoming…

My Tribe

I love my friends.

They tolerate me when I cancel plans.

They somehow always play to my strengths so I can remember they are there when I forget.

They are my mirrors in the dark.

They help me see past the messy house and too often worn clothes and forgotten story I told them yesterday that I am now telling them again.

They look beyond the un-pedicured toes and un-plucked brows and ugly shoes and dog hair covered coat.

They hear my tears when they haven’t even risen yet.

They eat cake with me and we call it ‘the sacrament.’

I know God knows what we mean and doesn’t mind a bit. Encourages it, in fact.

They shop for me so I can heal.

They travel to far away places with me in search of  doctors with good sense and the magic remedy that might urge me toward physical wholeness.

They look at me with their steady chihuahua eyes and in an instant I remember what matters.

They read my blog and tell me they like it and that it means something to them and I’m not just singing to the choir.

They keep me safe when I get off a horse and my legs crumple and then..

Then they hold me when I cry from frustration and then..

They laugh with me at the absurd theater of it all!

They make amazing meals and invite me to sit at their table.

They smile a genuine smile when they see me on the street.

They take Olivia for walks and love her well.

They have lunch with me after I see a new neurologist.

They drive me places and pick me up and pull right up to the door to let me off.

Even in the rain.

They respond when I have the courage to ask.

They help my heart open by slowly letting me see that helping me PLEASES THEM.

They help me whittle off the exhausted and hyper-vigilant me who knew herself only through serving others in the most unholiest of ways…to GET THEIR LOVE in return. Ugggggggg. It feels so PATHETIC to reveal that!!!!!!!!!!

But I know I’m not alone and someone’s gotta say it.

My friends are my anchor as this boat drifts and rolls with the swells.

I’ve got my pole hanging over the edge and catch great and unusual fish which I look at; I study them and familiarize myself with their newness and beauty and ugliness too.

I sit down to a meal, alone and rolling there on the sea and give thanks for each and every speckled fin and scale as I have the Thanksgiving meal of a lifetime.

And then I give thanks for it all… the whole darn table filled with exotic and frightening and sumptuousness spread out there for me..

But most of all- I give thanks for the ones holding the rope..

The ones who won’t let me drift too far but allow enough slack so I feel free to try on different emotions, different actions, different prayers to see what fits this newly authentic me.

They stand by me when I can’t.

And because of these gifts, I am here and feeling impossibly alive…

She Walks Pretty

Yesterday I went to a place called Hangar Orthotics and Prosthetics.

They make legs and arms etc.

Also, they create braces for people like me with foot drop which happens sometimes to people with MS.

It is a failure of the nerve impulses to travel coherently all the way down to lower extremities.

As a result , I have trouble lifting my right foot up as I walk and to avoid catching my dangling toes on the ground, I swing my whole leg out to the side to avoid the ground altogether.

It makes me tired to do this and afraid too.. afraid of taking a fall I might not have the strength to recover from.

And SO… along comes as my hero!  ALBERT.

He fit me with a 1/8″ thick resin brace that goes from my toes up to my knee joint.

He made an insta-cast of my entire foot and calf to be able to custom fit this to me.

It sounds disgustingly techno and heavy but in reality is fairly unobtrusive.

It keeps my foot at a 90 degree angle at all times and insures that my foot no longer curls under itself which it liked to do.

When he  let me try a brace on to get the feel of what this could do, my entire being relaxed into the effortlessness of WALKING! It was THRILLING! This walking thing…

The level of trustable support is amazing and I felt like a stupid idiot for not doing it sooner!

It was that pesky pride issue. I really had this very grand story going on about how it would look and be bulky and call MORE attention to myself and, and, and…

I got to pick out a pattern from a fairly extensive catalog to personalize this new part of my life.

I picked a leopard print.

This brace cannot really be detected too easily under pants; even the stretchy and form fitting
ones I wear.

I’ll need slightly bigger shoes to allow for the 1/8″ of resin but really no big deal in the scheme of things.

I am happy.

Happy I got around to taking good care of myself.

Happy I put the pesky pride down.

Pleased to think about using the energy I’ve been targeting toward fear and hyper-vigilance in my negotiating the world, for something else entirely.

Ease… give me ease.. I want ease now..

Makes me think that there is a slight possibility I may get some more of it when my power wheelchair is here.

Oh, God.. I’ll think about that tomorrow…

Close

All my life I have been intrigued by underwater colonies of barnacles, coral and kelp.

There was always something terrifying about the ‘intelligence en mass’ of a group of beings living so closely together.

But there was also the admiration I carried for them; that they had the ‘whatever’ to thrive both as independent elements and have the group identity as well.

You could see this as my anthropomorphizing this whole scenario..and you could be right..

Or it could be just a woman recognizing her own inherent distrust of other human beings as she watches other species in awe of their capacity to live so closely.

I love being a part of an intimate relationship but I lose my power pretty quick.

Or at least I have done that in the past. Haven’t given myself a chance in recent years. I do believe things might be very different as I am broken open now inside these dealings with my health.

Emphasis on the OPEN.

Most days I would not use the word ‘broken’ to describe me.

But really, If I did have a momentary crumpling into a puddle, wouldn’t it be nice, Cathy, to have a strong hand there to reach for?

Just asking.

You see, these are the interior ruminations that keep me company, sometimes.

They are mildly entertaining but my heart is ready for action.

I can tell because it starts beating faster when I think about barnacles…

I realize fully that this may sound mildly psychotic to some but I do think I get some points in the TRANSPARENCY department, don’t you?

If nothing else, it should make yourself feel very, very good about your own life..

And for that, I am glad.

Naive or Innocent?

I usually position myself in life as a student..

Knowing I am here to hopefully become a bit more tomorrow than I am today.

There seems to be a very distinct difference between meeting life at the door with wide eyes open to being called toward directions never dreamed,

AND…

The folly of surrendering to that very seductive naive place when the archives we carry inside us have distinct entries marking particular experiences with a big question mark.

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS THING BECAUSE I SEEM TO HAVE SEEN IT WRITTEN THAT YOU KNOW VERY WELL WHERE THIS ROAD WILL LEAD?

That’s naive.

Innocence is when you can sit down with a friend you’ve felt betrayed by and leave the history at the door. I am talking about the ADULT kind of innocence; not the infant kind where we have NO history to pull on us either way so we are truly a clean slate.

What I’m interested in is the state of being where we can risk an outcome beyond what we know by clearing the slate enough to allow something as yet unnamed to occur without putting our well being in jeopardy.

I come up against this in my choice of medications, supplements, diet, bodywork and beliefs I negotiate regarding PPMS.

Something new and untried often has the scent of quackery or ‘last-ditch-effort’ to it.

I hope never to lose my openness to innocence.

As long as I keep my archive alive and at the ready (which has alarm bells built in that keep me from harm most of the time), I will continue to open to new ways of thinking and treatment that feel correct for my body and soul.

Of course we can all go directly into the ring along with science and religion as they duke it out over the ‘rightness’ of the particular kind of intelligence each KNOWS is CORRECT.

I am grateful for the stability in my being that allows a modicum of openness to ‘other’.

What we know has taken us only so far.

There are miles to go before we sleep.

Ducks in a Row

Part of the purpose in writing this blog is an effort toward TRANSPARENCY.

First, to myself; then to you as the gift of truth..

My family ever so lovingly came to visit me en mass a few months back.

We were all scared.

We all love each other very much but, as adults, are just now piecing together the skill and courage it takes to know one another for real after living in such a very screwed up family for so long.

We survived our shared childhood.  Just.

Part of how we did that was to scatter across the tundra as soon as possible in an effort to save ourselves.

For a long time, just proximity to one another reminded us of the untenable atmosphere of home so we just skirted the issue and made our own insular lives separate from one another.

We all love each other to the core but stutter toward any connection that resembles constancy.

We are surely a family and I am so very proud of my sister and brothers AND we are making this up as we go along in the arena of how to be together in our current sanity coming from the challenging environment we survived.

We each have extraordinary gifts; my sister happens to be the best mother I have ever encountered (go figure..). She creates glorious meals that would make Martha Stewart question herself in the privacy of her own home. I admire her steadiness. She is brilliant, funny and resourceful. My brother dreamed of becoming a pilot when very young. Against all odds (my mother) he achieved this dream and flys for Southwest with Captain status. He, also is an amazing father. My other brother makes me laugh like no one else. He has a weird and dry humor, is smart along with funny, ALSO a great father, loves his family fiercely and as an adult is pulling away from the gate at quite a clip in the ‘giant-hearted’ department.

As I am the eldest and there is a 5 year difference between my sister and me, we all grew up in very different families, perception-wise.

We each chose survival identities for ourselves.

Mine, I would describe as etheric and impractical.

I was interested in the ATMOSPHERE of a thing; not the mechanics of making a secure and good life.

My love was and is THE PRESENT MOMENT.

I envy my siblings because they seem to have ease and capability in the practical department. They actually have a working relationship with THE FUTURE.

I am smack in the middle of PRIMARY PROGRESSIVE MS and getting the wake-up call of a lifetime in the ‘how-to-create-a-safe-and-secure-life’ department.

This is truly not for the faint of heart and I would not recommend attempting this without a loving and patient partner but here I am…IN IT.

Facing myself. Blinders coming off.

It’s really pathetic that humans don’t often change until we get in enough pain.

This is messy, messy business.  Rich territory but gritty at best.

Sometimes I wonder if that, right there is the reason I’m in this conundrum with MS.. Is it some weird graduate course in CHANGE I signed up for in a previous lifetime?

My sister says I am resilient.

She told me that yesterday.

Somehow, that comment coming from her felt like a shimmering thread of hope and encouragement that yes, I am seen and I really think I have it in me to go the distance..

Figure Eight

I was thinking about what makes a truly satisfying relationship for me.

Like, is there a one-sentence description that captures that most slippery slope of connecting with another in a way that leaves one completely satisfied?

I thought: “Maybe I should start here with my love for my dog and see exactly why this particular relationship feels so rich and multi-textured with nothing wanting.”

So: What do we have here?

Olivia has a life.

It is hers and hers alone.

Yesterday, when we came back from an errand, I was too tired to put on her leash to come into the house from the car so I let her out of the door, trusting she would follow me.

She did not.

I hobbled inside and watched myself swearing up a storm as I had to pee and wasn’t sure I’d make it and the dog wouldn’t come when called and I swore some more and thought myself so stupid for trusting she’d do what I wanted and knew my anger covered big fear that something bad would happen and, and, and…

I thankfully made it to the bathroom and then stood in the doorway and waited. And waited.

Ten minutes.

Half an hour.

Please know that stress is really not great for MS and I was certainly in it.

I was so very weak and yet this scenario was unfolding and I had to do something so I chanced getting back in the car to go look for her.

(This really is getting back to the subject in one second…)

Didn’t see her.

I am now quite paralyzed on many levels.

I drive home.

She runs out to greet me.

Jumps in the car and has her tail tucked between her legs and wagging it a mile a minute as she rolls over to have me rub her stomach.

Well.. I could have scolded her but my true reaction was intense gratitude for the gift of more time with her. My heart could barely contain itself  at the knowledge she chose to have her adventure on HER terms AND choose me again.

Isn’t that really IT?  That we all screw up repeatedly (in the others eyes) and yet..and YET!  There is room to return.  Return with the tales to tell from the adventure!

What does all this have to do with anything?

If you translate the scenario to human terms it looks like this:

Person is expected to do something you want them to do.

They don’t.

You get pissed off.

You get all mad and hard and ugly..

The whole world disappears because you are afraid what you had is no more and you can’t do a damn thing about it.

What I realized is this: Each of us has our own story, our own adventures, thoughts, beliefs, wants and desires.

We get in REAL TROUBLE if we think we have and control over another.

If you look at the template of a figure eight:

I’m not talking about a circle, here, but TWO independent and distinct circles.

Each person (dog, creature, anything, really..) has it’s own life and to make a REALLY successful relationship another qualifier is that the life is WHOLE and PERFECT on it’s own.

When two whole and strong circles meet; there- at that precious spot of joining, the miracle of successful relationship can happen, I think.

Only when each part is already whole and meet without a dire need to control or be completed in ANY way, can successful and satisfying relationship happen.

MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL RELATIONSHIP.

Lovely.. so very lovely.

..and challenging. So very, very challenging.

Hidden Tears

HIDDEN TEARS

You’re in there I know,

Hunkered down somewhere between

What’s here and what’s gone.

—–C.A. Oct. 2009

Creatures

I think I’ve spoken before about my relationship with turtles..

The turtle chose me long ago as my animal totem.

I really wanted something cooler like a hawk or whale or eagle; something recognizably powerful and majestic.

But turtle came to get me.. not just turtle, mind you.. but the DESERT TORTOISE.  Impossibly old and capable of navigating extreme terrain.

As time creeps forward, I see why we are together.

A turtle has some of the same characteristics that shells have..

They both carry a highly sophisticated and almost impenetrable outer shell.

No need for guns or sirens; the unbearably soft inner tissue is safe.

But they can choose… choose full exposure should they decide to.

Choose to come forward with the gift of that impossibly soft and vulnerable mass of evolving and changing tissue; continuously moving forward toward ‘becoming.’

One of the teachings for me personally, seems to be that I become aware of the total CONTAINMENT these creatures exhibit.

They are not dependent on outside forces for safe haven and carry their homes with them.

Their pendulous and painfully slow movement is the antithesis of what our culture celebrates and honors.

Slow……………………………

I am slow……………these days.

Strangely and quite unexpectedly, it allows me to constantly get all my ducks in a row, so to speak.

I find myself with a much larger reservoir for love, for instance..

And I let kindness wash over me for minutes, even hours, instead of almost missing it altogether.

I catch an intuition.

I see a friend’s eyes go from bright to dimly glazed and back again to bright at the mention of something or other.

I feel tears in the back of my throat left there weeks ago; uncried and losing their patience.

I sense how my legs lose their rooting when I’ve got my attention on the place I’m going instead of right here where I am.

And then, when I’m spent from all the energy it takes to keep BECOMING, I retract my long and vulnerable neck and arms and legs and tail and slip into that hidden nest where I’m pretty sure I can’t be found.

Until I want you to…

And more than likely, I’ll have something new and maybe dear to whisper in your ear or take your hand and we’ll have an adventure.

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