Weathering the storm

If life made sense, 39 wouldn't hurt so much.  Somehow, as I walked into the morning air of July 6, I felt the vulnerability of the ticking clock wash over me and it continues to this day.  A washing that didn't caress my skin or purify my position, but instead, it exposed me further to the changing winds of time as I stood bare and naked in the hushed light.  The tenor that has painted my days of the past decade no longer works here.  The passion, resilience, and intentionality with which I approached those days seems oddly disconnected from these feelings.  In their place is a deep and hallowed hush- much like the silence that shrouds the landscape during a break in a storm.  The storm will continue - that is for certain - so we sit and wait knowing that a finger - not ours - will hit the play button and deny the pause its silence once again. (Photo: Andre Kertesz - The Boat Returns Home - Central Park, 1944.  Mediatheque, Paris.)

My mind traces the potential meaning of the "3" and the "9" and the precipice upon which I find myself as I gaze into what will be my fifth decade.  I sort through the web of feelings that has been weaving over these days as I have watched one, not two, but several people within my sphere suffer great losses of those they love - robbed of their vitality and youth way too soon.  Of course there is Dennis, of whom I wrote in an earlier post.  While his memorial service was underway, my coordinator Jane's 26 y/o dear friend - a new law school grad studying for the bar - was murdered in the most gruesome way in her own apartment and detectives still are trying to locate pieces of her dismembered body.  A tall, beautiful blond  with the world at her feet, or at least she thought.  Or, at least we all think that - I'm not sure we can live sanely otherwise.  The sharp, gripping fear of these realities can overtake and rob us of any beauty that life has to offer.  That doesn't seem the answer either. 

All of these thoughts march through my mind as I sit in Thom's office and hear him recount the loss of his daughter's dear friend last week - a 35 y/o woman and running partner - who suddenly experienced a viral heart infection and died surrounded by eight doctors in the one of the best heart hospitals in the country.  She left two children and a loving husband - a man that cannot be comforted.  I want to reach out to Thom and to Jane and say - it's going to be OK.  But, we all know that these words fall like empty kisses that never are felt on the cheeks of those to whom they are intended. 

I find myself wanting to scream - enough, enough, enough - as I write a card to my friend Judy yesterday - a mother of two, who just emerged from weeks of chemo and now surgery for breast cancer.  She is suppose to be looking forward to the cooling temperatures, the falling of the golden crusty leaves in the autumn twilight but instead she braces herself for several rounds of radiation that will make her hair the autumn colors and textures she should enjoy as she embraces her children and kisses their ruddy, windblown cheeks.

So, here I am.  At night I lay in bed staring at the shadows of the ceiling fan and tracing the contours of the blades as they whirl overhead.  I spend the moments in the murky quiet seeking boxes with lids - lids that fit well - and within the confines of which I can place these unknowns, these questions and store them away for another day and time.  The boxes I find have gaping holes, and watersoaked sagging edges that clearly have marks of storm damage.  Their integrity is compromised as the contents seep out and cover me once again.     

Giving into the fear and the emotions that these events evoke isn't of my character.  The reality is, there aren't answers.  The image of the rainbow from earlier writings rises to the surface to bring comfort.  I sip into the dark liquid of my coffee cup as I ask myself this question now,

How might I see the beautiful reds, purples, greens, and yellows of the rainbow in the midst of the storm clouds? 

Do searching for these colors, finding them, and clasping them close as long as they are there - is that the key to living life well? 

We can't control the storm, the clouds, or even the rainbows, but as I search for the answers I'm finding that what we can control is what we choose to see and then hold tightly in our grasp.  For that to which we hold tightly is what we become.  The choice is ours.

A Rain-washed Face

My Grandpa Palpant would have been 106 yesterday if his battle with cancer hadn’t taken his life 20 years ago this month.  I honored him today by placing a gilted framed photo of him in his French military uniform on the chest in my living room.  His fine Mediterranean features unmarked by wrinkles and sunspots so prominent in his later years almost announce, if they could speak, the vibrancy of his dreams, an insatiable thirst for adventure, and the vigor of a man yet to know his destiny.  Within two years he would wash the North African desert sand off the uniform, pack it into a closet, and put his name on a ship manifest headed to the United States.  I’ll never forget the day that he died, as my young adult body helped to hold him in my arms and then watched him pass on peacefully.  (Photo: Grandpa on the right and his brother on the left outside my Great Grandfather's home in Sidi-Aich, Algeria - circa 1925)

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about the passage of time and how it is marked based on our own mortality as humans that walk this earth.  Tonight as I write this, across the city my sister and her colleagues and friends are gathered in a small church to memorialize the life of Dennis, a dear friend who died of cancer last week.  Dennis at 50 was one of the most vivacious and adventurous spirits to walk into corporate board rooms and sit on a trading floor.  He grew up in Alaska and worked on deep sea fishing boats before making his way into the financial industry and ultimately taking on the mantel of chief compliance officer.  He played basketball five days a week and when he lost the sight in one eye after a basketball accident a few years ago, he pushed on.  From diagnosis to death, cancer took Dennis in a little over five months and he died in hospice last Monday. (Photo: Dennis with friends in our renovated townhouse.)

I am struck by how amazingly resilient we are as humans as we have the capacity to press on under the most dire of circumstances.  At the same time, our bodies and minds can be incredibly vulnerable and fragile and we are presented with no timecard to create a system whereby exits can be planned and coordinated.  There is no set measure, but it seems to me that we all walk this earth acting like there is a measure that can be counted upon and one that provides a great deal of flexibility.  We often live with the margin that 106 is a reality for all of us.

My body is especially attuned to our vulnerabilities at the moment.   I underwent surgery 10 days ago to cut off the blood supply to almost two dozen non-cancerous tumors (a very common type for females actually) that will slowly shrink over the next 3-6 months after the initial shock of the surgery.  The pain was well-anticipated and I was armed with muscle relaxers and primed with pain medications but what was not anticipated fully by me is the grinding fatigue that I feel.  I am vulnerable – we all are vulnerable – and my body is on its own timeframe for recovery.  It is hard to accept when one’s brain thirsts for stimulation and adventure.  So, I settle in to write and explore what I can learn from these experiences between just resting my body.  It is clear to me, that I live in a body prone to failure, as we all do.  So the paradox, the body is temporary but sacred and this life is fleeting but all that we have.  So, what do we make of it? 

Saturday night presented one of those moments that are so rare they happen only a handful of times in a lifetime.  There is no doubt that I will reflect back upon this moment with a great sense of knowing that it was divine.  As my Sis and I sat in the silence of my living room absorbing the loss of Dennis and the challenges of my surgery, we were overcome by the great sorrow that can be this life at times.  It was one of those times in which we as humans stare our vulnerability full in the face and find that there is precious little that is physically tangible upon which to grasp except to know that God is with us. 

At a pivotal moment in our conversation, my sister looked up and out my living room window to find that the sky had opened to a downpour of rain but that the sun still was shining.  She ran to the window and saw a glimpse of a rainbow cutting through the sky.  As quickly as my post-surgery body could move, we made our way to the top of the parking deck adjacent to my apartment to observe the fullest most vivid and long-lasting double rainbow that I have seen in my lifetime to this point.  We both stood on the deck with our mouths gaping open at the most tangible promise that God is with us and that life is indeed a blend of the dark/bad (rain clouds) and the light/good (sun) – the necessary recipe for a rainbow.  It moved both of us deeply and to our core, to have such a tangible miracle upon which to grasp hold of during this time.  

So in the quiet of my place tonight, I find myself still pondering the question - - how should I choose to live knowing that life is sacred but yet fleeting and how might I not succumb to fear in the process?  Throwing caution to the wind doesn’t seem the answer because my desire is to live intentionally and with purpose.  Perhaps to be considered further is the learning to embrace fully the dark and the light of life.  As I learn to do this, with my head thrust back facing the sky and washed anew with the rains, I can open myself to the most beautiful possibilities in life.  And perhaps, that is the key to a life well-lived.

In the Wee Hours of the Morning

It is 4:30 in the morning in Johannesburg, and I am sitting in the quiet of my warmly lit hotel room that feels oddly like home.  The comfort of the plush terry robe keeps me company along with the freshly brewed cup of Nescafe sitting on the nightstand.  I'm a resident of the world as I choose to embrace the familiarity of this quiet moment continents away from my life in Georgia.

The wings that brought me here glided through frozen air thousands of feet above an expanse of ocean that seemed endless as I watched our progress on the computer screen at my seat.  One hour, two hours, and counting...until I reached fifteen.  Fifteen hours it took from the moment we left the last soil of the U.S. at the South Carolina shore until we broke through the soil at Namibia on the continent of Africa.  Fifteen hours of gliding over an ocean.  Calculating those hours brings a new knowing of the vast world in which we find ourselves playing out life on its stage.

The enormity of our world and its complexities reveal to me in the heavy echoes of summer's glory drifting through the evening African air.  The final encores of the hot, sticky days of the warmest months of the year can be felt and heard as I watched the sunset last night over the landscape broken by Jacaranda trees.  Autumn is ushered in - although quietly - as native South Africans cling to the last moments of life this year in their summer clothes.

Today will be filled with many more new sights and sounds as I meet with several people including the photographer we hired to capture the work.  In a few hours I will meet Zane for a coffee and later today there will be a traditional "Braai" (South African BBQ of game meats) at Marion and Ian's for guests and partners.  The training begins early tomorrow morning - and so, I take a deep breath.

Radiation - My Personal Story

Radiation and I have a love/hate relationship.  The current events unfolding in Japan have sparked an intense debate worldwide about the benefits and challenges of nuclear energy.  As I have sought to find my position on the issue, I am confronted by the fact that I live because of its healing powers and at the same time my health was compromised by its darker, shadow side.

My first serious confrontation with nuclear power seems almost ironic as I consider the large expanse of my childhood spent on the countryside of Michigan running barefoot through acres of woods, vegetable gardens, and a former peach orchard.  The exception fell within a span of just 10 months.  Within those 10 months, our family embarked on an adventure to Pennsylvania where we lived, worked and played in inner-city Philadelphia so my father could experience teaching in a Christian school environment.  On a cold March day, my seven-year old self - sporting a new short haircut - road the bus to my first grade classroom.  Jimmy Carter was President of the United States and unfolding only 75 miles from me beginning early that morning was the worst nuclear disaster in our country’s history.  The Three Mile-Island nuclear power plant had a partial core meltdown in Unit 2.   

Much of what happened did not register with me at the time.  I remember instead being enamored by the silver and gold crayons that the boy in the desk next to mine had in his 64 crayola box and the waiting restlessly for storytime after lunch when my teacher would bring us together on the rug and read aloud the C.S Lewis Narnia series.  I wanted to be Lucy in all of her queenly glory and to put my arms around Aslan’s neck and hug him tight.

Pubic health reports indicate that radiation levels where I was living at the time were not dangerous enough to impact the health of small children, but I do stop to consider the irony of the timing and my little place in the world.  As I lay my small brunette head on the pillow, in my dreams I never would have thought it possible for me to be diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 29 just as much as I wouldn’t have dreamt that I would be working for Rosalynn Carter, then first lady, during the most formative days of my career.  Nor would I dream that the very dangerous I-131 being released in the air near me would be the healing power for my thyroid cancer over 20 years later.

I turned 13 years old in France in the summer of 1986.  At times an awkward, emotional girl, I closed myself in the hotel bathroom that early July day and used loads of toilet tissue to wipe my tears.  I found growing up overwhelming and the larger world a mysterious place that held a position for me that I could not fully grasp.  That trip with my family changed me significantly.  By mid-July I had met many members of my French family for the first time and saw within them various components of “me!” They looked like me and I found my characteristics resonating in their world. 

Before visiting the family and all the “awakenings,” my parents took us on a tour of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in late June.  Little did we know that the heavy rain that followed the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in late April of that year would leave radiation levels higher than normal throughout Europe as the nuclear cloud moved across the continent in the weeks after.  As we played in the mountains of Germany, we know now that the mushrooms, and other natural materials registered higher levels of radiation.  In fact, for years, the French government hid the data supporting higher rates of thyroid cancer in the years following Chernobyl and the potential contamination of the fruits and vegetables in those months we were there.  We will never know the degree to which that may have played a role in my own experience with thyroid cancer, but I let it stand as a small clue to understanding the health issues that unfolded over the next decades.

In the fall of 2001, coincidentally during the week of 9/11, a growth was detected in my thyroid area.  By October I found myself in nuclear medicine at piedmont hospital where over the next year I was repeatedly exposed to radiation in an effort to test for, treat, and further monitor cancerous activity in my thyroid.  It is hard for someone like me – not a nuclear physicist – to understand the power and impact of something not visible but so incredibly dangerous.  The irony of it all still strikes me; how is it that the very thing that may have caused my cancer may be the healer as well? 

When one is a specimen, it is challenging to see outside him/herself during such a time of crisis and note the physical toll such a radiation load is having on one’s body.  Viewing pictures from that time, I see a girl with a swollen neck and the original beautiful brunette hair a reddish color and the texture of straw.  A vivid memory from that time was returning home from the hospital after three days of isolated I-131 radiation.  Abby and Bebe, my two dogs, longed to comfort me but the radiation load made them vomit and become so ill that they had to be removed from my room. 

I stand healed and in good health now as I watch what is happening in Japan.  The current headlines can’t begin to tell the full story of nuclear power and radiation.  The story will continue to unfold over the decades to come, and as a result, there is no way for it to fully inform the current debate or policies.  Despite my exposure to and knowledge of its incredible impact, nuclear power still remains as much a mystery to me today as it was to me on that cold March morning in 1979.

Time away -- yes, I am writing

As promised, I have been writing, but not in this space...

Within the next few weeks I have three pieces being published and will be certain to include them here.  I co-wrote a piece with the Rosalynn Carter Chair in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory for the Academic Exchange.  In addition, I have a large piece coming out in Global Health Magazine (including some amazing photos by a former Fellow).  Finally, I am doing a piece for the Huffington Post next month.  I'm excited about these opportunities and look forward to sharing them with you.   I hope to return to my personal pen very soon.  Love to all - Rebecca

Pruning as an Art and Life Lesson

Winter was ushered into the Deep South this week with thunderous applause bestowed on it by snow, freezing rain and the most dangerous inches of ice blanketing everything.  I have spent most of my life in a desperate search to find ways in which to evade winter’s terrible claws – including uprooting my life to the sunnier and more gentle south.  Everything about winter is difficult for me – bitter cold that somehow penetrates through my skin and thrusts deep into my core, gray skies that leave me wondering if color ever will paint the landscape again, and night edging the daylight out at earlier and earlier hours starving me of the sunlight that stabilizes moods and provides large doses of energy.

I have come to learn that there are lessons in winter if one sits and allows its teacher to whisper in an accepting ear.  The lesson took form and stepped into full view a week or two ago – the art of pruning was its name.  At first blush I shuddered at the thought of taking a cold, harsh blade and sacrificing the flesh of the beautiful plants, bushes, and trees that I adore.  These are the very elements of creation that feed my soul, provide nourishment to my body, and bring a kaleidoscope of color to the landscape on which my eyes feast. 

Rick provided the lesson.  He took me by the hand as we strolled his yard and offered an explanation of the value of taking the beautiful crape myrtles that fill my eyes with wonder each spring and reducing them to almost a shadow of the form I know so well.  It is hard enough for me to trust, even without the pruning, that the bare limbs stark in their simple form and waving in the crisp cold will come to life and burst with flower buds in a few short months.  My trust is tried further as clippers are taken to branches and in some cases limbs and a sacrifice is made of the plant that I love.  I am beckoned to place trust in the cycles of the seasons during a time in which I need beauty and color the most – life and nature are filled with irony.

Clippers in hand Rick and I wind our way to the back of the house by the pool holding our coats tightly against the cold and walking purposefully to the bed that I find almost impossible to face – the most beautiful hibiscus plants, four of them, that make summer dazzle and shimmer each day.  (Photo: Me with the hibiscus plant mid-summer.)  Rick offers me the clippers and provides instructions – each plant must be cut all the way back to the ground surface, reducing it to a bouquet of dried nubs to be forgotten.  As a child fuming over losing a favorite toy, I grab the clippers and attack the first plant fuming and frustrated until it is whittled to nothing – throwing the dead branches as darts against an angry cold sky. 

I am learning that as much as nature offers lessons, it also promises miracles within its solutions.  The lessons of pruning mirror the biblical paradox – “if one loses his/her life, he/she will find it.”  By cutting deeply into branches, one is offering the gift of a better and more productive life for the tree or plant.  This simple act provides the opportunity to stimulate growth with the option to produce growth even further back on the branches!  All this time I was thinking we were sacrificing but in reality we are adding with good measure.  Pruning rejuvenates and in some cases it encourages an outward push instead of growing into its center.  It removes what is superfluous or undesirable and lessens the chance of falling during a wind or ice storm.  Rick and I possibly are saving the lives of the plants we love so much with this simple act performed in the biting cold. 

It is clear to me, as I ponder the concept of pruning, that there are lessons for humans in this too.  Perhaps many of us find ourselves considering these lessons during this challenging economy that forces us to tighten belt buckles and consider areas in which we may be able to do without.  By cutting away the old and the excess, we make room for new and enriched opportunities and relationships. 

This lesson made its way into my life this afternoon as my little hatchback, filled to the roof, carefully made its way to the local Goodwill with items from a storage closet that my sister and I share.  Long forgotten, many of the items were taking up valuable/expensive space that could be better used by others.  By pruning these belongings I was reminded that this simple act forces us to look outward instead of having an internal focus, as roses do if not pruned timely and well. 

We never were promised that growth was easy and painless – for us or for the plants.  But perhaps the reward at the end of the journey is well worthwhile.  I’ll know this to be true when the hibiscus plant produces its first blooms in a few months and the red hues of its flowers lift to face the late spring sun.

Ushering in a New Year - New Writings to Unfold

The year of 2010 provided me with unprecedented opportunities to unleash myself upon the world and explore the breadth of its wonders now that my health is better than any time in my adult life and doctors declare me “boring”- Standing on Cape Point at the tip of Africa observing the vast oceans colliding into the rocks (Photo: Sunset at Chapman's Peak, Cape Town, South Africa - Feb 2010) ≈ Watching the sunrise melt into day over the Burrard Inlet in Vancouver ≈ Tubing on the crystal surface of  the St. Johns River alligator infested waters ≈ and Drinking in the sunset on the Danube as we floated out of Budapest, Hungary. 

I have been dreaming a lot lately about this vast open space we call life.  As we break into 2011, I am eager to pick up the pen again and to write frequently in this blog - something I haven't done for 18 months.  It is my hope to capture the amazing experiences of this life as they unfold, which
will better enable me to fall fully into their possiblities. 

Welcome to this journey.  With all my affection, Rebecca