Do You Believe in Magic?

Mount Katadhin

If you're going to live in Maine, and stay here through the winter, than you might as well embrace these months of cold, snow and ice.  This past weekend is exactly what myself and thirteen other people did as we headed into Maine's biggest state park, Baxter ... home of Maine's tallest mountain, Mt. Katadhin.

A friend, Alice,  put out an email asking about interest in doing a trek into the Katadhin Lake Camps months ago.  She proceeded to make all the needed inquiries and reservations in advance to secure the  number of cabins necessary to house all those who planned on going.

Getting to this lake is no walk in the park mind you!  We all needed to be prepared to ski the 14.2 miles into the cabins on Katadhin lake bringing all our winter clothing and gear,  our own food and beverages and any other needed winter recreational apparatus, i.e., snowshoes or climbing spikes.  We were offered the choice of hauling our own stuff - done by hauling sleds behind you, much like a Draft horse pulls the plow - or have the owners of the camp take our stuff in with their ski sleds for a very minimal fee.  Hmmm ... let's see ... what-to-do ... all of us opted to have our gear transported for us!

The plan was to ski in on Friday morning, leaving early enough that even the slowest skier would be able to make it to the camps with light still in the sky.  This entails getting out of Portland and being in the tiny town of Millinocket on Thursday night in order to be up at the gate to the park by 9:00 a.m.

On Thursday I saw a few clients in the morning and Dave and I planned a 3:00 p.m. get-out-of-Dodge departure time.  This would put us at the hotel in Millinocket by 7:00.  Thursday, while at work, I couldn't seem to get warm and found myself actually shivering at times.  And my stomach was a bit upset, I had a little, tiny headache and .. uh oh, my whole body ached!  Is this the flu?  Really?  After all these months and months of planning, all the people I treated all winter long who were sick and I did not catch one virus ... now?  I was going to get sick NOW?!

I got home and explained my symptoms to Dave.  He felt my forehead and said, "you have a fever.  Mary, what do you want to do?" I said, "I want to drive up there".  His eyebrows went up in a severe question.  "What if I wake up Friday feeling just fine?  I want to be up there to decide on Friday morning how I feel."  Dave thought I was crazy but he agreed to go.  He also agreed to drive the entire way to allow me to sleep, which I did, nestled and shivering under a big-guns down jacket that a friend was lending me for this trip.  I gave myself a couple little mini-acupuncture treatments on the drive up and went straight to bed when we got to the hotel.  No dinner and socializing with the crew as they arrived for this gal!

Now, on the drive up I had said to Dave that I thought he should go on this trip regardless of how I might feel on Friday morning;  I could drive home alone and he could hitch a ride with someone on Monday.  His response was, "Yes, I think I probably will!"  I admit, this was not the response I had been hoping for!  I almost broke down in tears at that point.  But instead, I resolved to get better.   I thought about Jim; who had the will of ... of ... I don't know what of, but his will was so, incredibly strong.  I saw this when he was sick and crippled, but still he would push himself to do things that no one ever thought he'd be capable of in his condition.   I witnessed this will of his countless times over our years together.  He would not let much stop him if he had his mind and heart set on something. After a pretty severe cycling crash,  that cracked a couple ribs and turned his thigh into hamburg, he still wanted to make a four hour drive to see our God-daughter graduate from Smith College.  Oh, and he drove the entire way too; as long as he didn't sneeze or laugh he felt OK.

 So I thought about this as I shivered under that down jacket.  I thought about how Jim Daniels would have decided to go, even if he was sick.  He would put his head down and not complain and just do what he could regardless.

At 6:00 a.m. Friday morning Dave woke me and asked, "how do you feel?" The fever had broken in the night, the body no longer ached, my stomach needed food but I didn't feel sick.  "I feel pretty good! I'm doing this trip!"

Some of the crew and most of our gear

I don't know what the magic pill was that had me beat the flu within twelve hours; acupuncture?  Maybe.  Latching onto a bit of the Jim Daniels will?  Maybe.  My own resolve and my own will to just do it?  Maybe.  I honestly don't know.

What I do know is it was an amazing weekend with good friends.  The wildness in me needs to be out under stars unadulterated by any kind of electrical lights.  It needs to look at a mountain and watch the clouds swirl around the peak.  It needs to connect with the wildness of my world and get recharged.  So I'm grateful for whatever magic there was for me that allowed me to be healthy enough to get out there and connect once again.


I believe in magic!

Loving you all back,
Mary

Loving You All Back

I was out early this morning, driving into this "historical Nor'Easter" that was advancing faster than predicted and already making slippery roads with the accumulation of several inches of downy snow.  I needed staples for a fish chowder, coffee and the half and half I can't live without when I have coffee.  A few little errands before hunkering down for a major, Maine snow storm.

Mary, Jim, Nancy T.

Driving home I suddenly thought of my blogs closing sentiment of "loving you all back". As my mind took off in various directions with this thought, I wondered if it comes off as flippant for those who may be joining the blog recently versus those who have followed it from the beginning back in January 2009.  Back when we first learned of Jim's diagnosis and we began the cancer dance.

So, I am wanting to explain just what "loving you all back" means to me and why I'm still using it.

When Jim was diagnosed with the grade 4, glioblastoma, our good friend, David Puelle, set up a Lotsa Helping Hands website.  He told me it could be a place where I could write things and keep Jim's large, caring community abreast of all that was going on, "this may keep you from having to say the same things too many times, Mary."  And thus the blog began.

This caring community of Jim's was huge.  I mean HUGE!  As I've said so many times before, as Jim's brain cancer ate away at all that he was and all that he was capable of doing he needed 24/7 care.  Our healthcare and resources did not allow me to find services that could help as I just couldn't afford them.

Not Dead Yet ride

But friends stepped up.  The amount of love, care and assistance that we received during the 18 months that Jim fought so hard to live was, well, astounding!  For three days per week there were friends who came for either a morning or afternoon shift so that I could continue to work.  There were other shifts on the weekend that friends covered that allowed me to still go out for trail runs or bike rides, to do errands or to simply give me a few hours to stop and breathe.  There were friends who took over all the finances, the insurance quagmire, had dinners brought to us weekly, stopped in to visit and cleaned the house, swept the deck, took Ella for walks.  Neighbors who started to take the garbage out every week, shovel our walk, mow the lawn, bought and stacked cords of wood.  Friends and family who offered acupuncture at home for Jim, offered other alternative healing modalities.  There was "PT Dave" who worked endlessly with Jim and made home visits as well as helped to get Jim on a tandem bike so he could ride for five miles in a cancer fundraising ride called "Not Dead Yet"... and ran the entire time beside Jim's tandem!  Nancy T. who pulled together three ... THREE ... fundraisers for us and the owner of the bike shop, CycleMania, put up a bike for a raffle to help boost the funds.  Jim's professional friends who got a photo show up and running with gorgeous, framed prints.  It was an amazing photographic show of Jim's wonderful work .. and the auction of the framed prints were added to the fundraising.

And then there were all the people who came out for these events in order to see Jim.  All the people who were unable to be here daily but we knew they were there supporting us.  And so I blogged and kept over 300 people informed on Jim's condition.  And the emails, responses to the blogs, the cards, the visits from people across the country coming to help for a long weekend ... all of this was so overwhelming and the love that poured over and through us from this amazing community is, I believe, what allowed Jim to live nine months longer than any of his doctors predicted.

Thus, I would close all my blogs with, "loving you all back" ... because we were.  It was impossible to ever say thank you enough, impossible to ever repay all that was given to us in all these different ways. But at the end, when Jim was so compromised, he would look someone directly in the eye and you could see he was pure love.  People wanted to be with him because the love that flooded out of him was palpable.  And it was this love that I would try to voice through the sentiment of "loving you all back".

Today, when I write this still, I feel my heart fill a little more; expanding with this fullness and the memory of all this.

It's not flippant at all.  It's a full as a harvest moon.

So I am ... loving you all back,
Mary

Ella

Ella

I've been reading, The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller.  It's a tough book to recommend, it's a bit depressing about a postapocalyptic world.  It's beautifully written though, with some phrases having me sigh with the poetry of them.  Last night I was reading a segment about the main character, Hig, and his old dog, Jasper.  Jasper warns his owner about any dangers that are around night or day ... and there are many as, like most fiction regarding a world after the apocalypse, humans just don't get along so well.

Hig takes Jasper hiking up into the mountains in order to hunt and fish what little wildlife is still around in the higher elevations.  Jasper is moving very slow, seeks out the sunshine whenever Hig stops to fish, sleeping, but always aware of his owner.  After they've made camp and had dinner Hig gets the bedding ready and Jasper "walks stiff to me almost a hobble, the hike today long.. then he curls against me with his customary collapse and huff."

In the morning Jasper is dead, having passed in his sleep.  It takes a long while for this truth to sink into our main character's reality.  Heller has Higs' grief dawning slowly and I had tears streaming down my face.

This part of the story line is too close to my own story with my old gal, Ella.  Ella is still very much here, but she definitely "hobbles" more than trots, "collapses with a huff" and tends to lick her wounds often;  but the wounds are really her swollen joints aching.  She continues to try and care for this pain the only way she knows how.  When her Lyme disease is in remission she will ask to go for a trail run, and I will take her for a very short one because I've seen how she twirls in delight and takes off with a stiff-legged gate down the path in pure joy.  Even though I know she will be very sore for a couple days, I'll give her aspirin and I will not say "no" to her and keep her from this bit of happiness she and I share.

She's been with me for  twelve years.  Jim and I picked her out when she was eight weeks old.  Jim took her to the office with him where she was a magnet walking through Portland's old port for any dog lover to "aw" over.  She went through Jim's cancer with me, often times refusing to join me to go on errands if Jim was going to be left alone to nap.  She would walk backwards away from the door and just look at me, "OK, you stay and watch over Jim.  I'll be right back."  And she'd turn and go to lie beside Jim  on the couch.

She comes to the office with me everyday now.  My clients love her.  She's not a "licensed therapy dog" but there is much therapy to be had for most people when they walk in and see her tail pounding the floor in recognition.

Reading about the death of that old dog last night nearly ripped me apart.  I don't know how much more time Ella has with me, but I know the days are more numbered now than they were a few years ago.  I've had people ask me if I'm prepared for when she has to go.  Prepared?   I'm not sure how one prepares for this.  Certainly I know it's going to happen and I also know that no matter what I do now or how often I turn and face the inevitable ... when she goes it's going to rip me apart.

But I won't take any action until she tells me it's time and not before.  When she gives me that look, that I've seen in my other dogs, there's no denying when she'll be ready.

  How I would love for her to just pass in her sleep while we lay out under the          
  stars.

   Loving you all back,
   Mary

January 3, 2013

Jim and I with a younger Ella

Today would be Jim's 62nd birthday.  My mom's birthday is January 2nd - she turned 91 - so these two Capricorns were both on my mind when I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday yesterday.  I woke this morning fully aware that it is Jim's birthday today.  But there has been no tsunami, no undertow sucking me into the deep; the beast seems to be sleeping.  So I got on with my morning in a normal fashion ... if this morning could be called normal ...

... With the outside thermometer reading 1 degree Fahrenheit I decided I wanted to go for a trail run.  As the sun oozed out of the Atlantic and brought with it a brilliantly blue day the temperature climbed all the way to 4F!  Good enough!

I decided to take Ella with me.  Ella has not run with me since last spring.  Being the responsible dog-owner that I am I made the difficult decision that running was becoming too painful for her.  Even when she stands at the door asking if she can go I have refused her knowing it is in her best interest not to run with me.  But this morning I decided I would take her.  At 4F I figured even if she was only good for 15 minutes that would be enough for me too.  When I asked her, "do you want to go for a run?", her ears perked up, she stood and looked at me as if to say "are you kidding me?  Really?  Promise?", and then she stood by the door with her tail wagging while I got my shoes on.

I headed for the power lines knowing the sleds would have made trails that would offer us a hard packed surface and make the running easier.  I lifted Ella out of Dave's big truck and she immediately ran down the trail a little and threw herself into the first snow drift only to emerge looking like a confection sugar coated sweet heart!  Happy dog!

And then she took off running ... RUNNING ... down the trail!  I followed her lead and by God that old girl ran for 15 minutes in one direction before she started to ask if we might walk for a little bit.  Of course, take a roll in the snow and we'll have some recovery time.  At this moment, in this stunning blue day I saw a red-tailed hawk fly directly over us ... "Happy Birthday Jim" ... and then I understood! This was why I got myself out here on this achingly cold day.  This is why I brought Ella with me.  This is why I preferred to come out here alone.

And this was how I wanted to celebrate Jim's birthday ... on a trail he and I ran together on so many, many times and with this little gal who we both loved and called our "Ella Bella".  And as that hawk soared over head I understood ... he was with us at that very moment.

Happy Birthday Jimmy D.
I still miss you .... and always will .... but we're doing OK here.  We're Ok.

Loving you all back,
Mary

Winter

We've been hit by two big snow storms over the last week.  Like in Camelot, it came in on Christmas day and gave us a white Christmas.

Last night the second storm was raging.  At 8:30 it was dark and wild out there and I got the urge to go out into it.  My dog, Ella, was sound asleep in front of the fire (as was Dave!) so I put on boots and several layers and quietly said "want to go for a walk?".   That old girl was up on her feet in seconds and at the door.  She loves snow!

Once outside my arthritic dog, who tends to hobble around the house, heaves a big sigh before doing the stairs and lays down with a groan, was prancing down the driveway!  Our tracks were the only ones laid into the inches of new snow.  We headed down to the town landing; being drawn into the full force of this storm.

The sea was black, as was the night.  Ella and I walked out to the end of the pier, which was snow covered, with the wind howling down on us and the falling snow lashing at my uncovered face.  Ella put her ears back and found one little strip of boardwalk that was bare of the snow to make her traveling easier.

At the end of this pier the little gate that opens to the dock in the summer had been blown open and held in that position by the snow pack.  I was feeling secure with the high rails of the pier protecting me, but this open, gaping mouth that dropped right into the bay at the end of the pier felt a bit eerie.  I put my shoulder into it and closed the gate as much as I could.  Then I felt a little safer to lean over the rail and look into the black waters below.

I always get this odd feeling when looking into water ... there's a bit of a pull to jump in.  Now, I'm a rational being and have no "death wish" so you can all stop worrying, I would never do it.  But as I stared into that undulating water below there is a sirens call ...

... Ella nuzzled my leg and brought me back to the pier as she pulled on her leash to head home.

Again, I was amazed by this little dog as she danced up the steep hill that leads away from the beach and back to the house.  Something about the sirens call of a storm was surging through her and giving her a new energy and excitement to her step.

Me too.

Something about a storm always pulls me out into it .... needing to get outside and feel the power, the wind, the storm all around me ... it's a primal feeling.  And, of course, knowing I get to return to a warm home with the fire blazing makes the going out that much easier.

And having someone at home, helping me to shrug off the snow covered layers, wanting to hear all about the storm and bustling me towards the stove ..... is the biggest luxury of all.

I am looking forward to this coming New Year.  I hope all of you are too.

Have a safe and wonderful celebration to the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.

Loving you all back.
Mary

Thanksgiving 2012

Mt. Abraham, Maine

I have a couple friends on Facebook who have been posting their gratitude for the entire month of November.  Each day a new "I'm thankful for ... " would appear as Paula's post.  It was a wonderful thing to see each morning when I would log onto that sight.


My favorite teacher from high school, who was my band director, my ski-team coach and the builder and designer of the sets for the school musicals lost his wife to cancer just two days ago.  Still he has posted his "thank you's" to all who showed up for them, all who raked leaves, cooked, sat with them and sent their prayers.  I'm sure this day has a huge hole in it for him that no amount of food will ever fill.

And we can only be thankful for all that love we once had, were blessed to be part of, that continues to exist in us, around us, even when that person has passed from this life.  All that love does not pass, it hovers and continues to bless us as we struggle to find our way in a whole new world.

I too have so much to be thankful for; a family that is whacky and wonderful and whom we all still just love to gather with each other.  My 90 year old mum who is still sharp as a tack and needs no assisted living even as she gets a bit unsteady.  The man I spent 35 years with who showed me how to love, taught me what friendship is and what a deep and everlasting love can be.  And because he loved me so well I was able to open up and accept a new love;  the bar had been set very high and I'm incredibly grateful that I have not needed to compromise in any way ... Dave is an amazing man and has moved in matching me, stride for stride.

With Dave comes two wonderful boys, David and Eben, and all the Lovejoy clan as well as his huge list of friends, all who embraced me so quickly and already I feel like family in this new circle.

I'm grateful that my sisters-in-law, Donna and Stacie, remain my sisters ... regardless of the law!  They have always been and will continue to be family though we share no genetic codes.

As I sit here smelling the turkey, the woodstove glowing and creating a comfortable warmth in our little home I realize how incredibly rich I am ... there is an abundance of food, there is warmth, there is love ... so very rich.

Thanks giving.  I am grateful and thankful beyond earth and sky.

May we all remain open in gratitude, every day.

Loving you all back,

Mary

Heading Into the Storm

This morning I took a run in shorts and a t-shirt.  Maine, in November, is not suppose to have balmy weather.  It's a little eerie.  This day is gray and threatens a change.  A half mile from my house I realized I was running straight into the storm; the sky was black, the wind was picking up and I could see the rain up ahead.  I told myself if I saw lightening I would turn around and sprint it home.  But instead, I put my head down and kept running straight into it.

And this is too perfect for my life this week.  There is a storm brewing for me around relationships.  No, not my relationship with Dave nor is this about Jim;  I am being called into my feminine power, asked to respond to the feminine relationships in my life.  And as I turn to do this I realize I must settle into my own warrioress ... who tends to ask more of me than others, asks me to open my heart, to find strength in the compassionate and to be honest with myself.

I don't always like her ... she tends to be tough.  She tends to be right.  And she always teaches me something.

As I ran into this storm this morning I found myself opening up, lifting my bowed head and unfolding to the rain, the wind, the power.  This is what I am being asked to do, to unfold and open myself up to receiving my lesson.  To step into "not knowing"; a place of not needing to understand it all, not grasping any one emotion as the gamut floods through me of pain, disappointment, sadness, anger, confusion.  To just let all this flow around me and through me and remain open to the wind and to listen for the information that may descend for me.

It's interesting that before this personal storm struck, my friend, Kim, called and asked me if I wanted to go see the psychic, Tracy.  My niece, Molly, and I had talked about going to see Tracy again.  I had not made the call, procrastinating even when I know it can take several months to get in to see Tracy.  When Kim called and said there were back-to-back appointments if I wanted to go with her on Friday the 16th I thought, "well now,  I guess I'm suppose to go sooner verses later." So I agreed.

And then my life's shit hit the fan.

I feel that even when the Universe slaps me around a little bit, putting challenges before me so that I might grab the lesson and, ultimately, to find growth in all of this, it also offers me tools that I may need.  Perhaps, I won't have to figure all this out by myself this time.

Loving you all back,
Mary