Purple Iris

Be kinder than necessary
Because everyone you meet is fighting
Some kind of battle.

The KIVA

Remember back in the 70's when the Kiva was a big warehouse down on 11th, next to a dance hall, and other good stuff. The whole foods grocery if I visualize it right was in the back right hand corner. There were books, and wines, and things--kitchen things, homesteader things, bulk foods. There was an earth shoe shop in a little loft near the front door accessed by a ladder and not tall enough to stand upright in. Remember? And down along one side there were booths and tables and folks hung out there. We ran into friends. I was living down by Cottage Grove then, and would come in with my partner Wayne, and friends from our little "back to the land" farm we called Tanager. I was the only person in our friend group to have a baby one of those years--Day, born in 1974-- in our little home made house on Blue Mountain School Road made from the recycled boards of the old Cottage Grove Hardware Store. There was a bunch of us living there then, maybe a dozen. It was eventful and full of love, work, gardening, goats, and other forms of angst. When Day was born, being the baby of a big household he was a pretty popular item. Everyone wanted to hold him, a phrase was born--"Let me hold 'im", which came out "...hold eem" and then became a nick name for a while. I remember being in the Kiva one day after Day started toddling and he was loose running around. Across the room I heard a happy shout. "It's Eem! It's the Eem beam!" Our friend Michael Forster, Magic Michael had spotted his little darling.

One day not long ago, I saw a young mom with a little kid, blond hair long enough to blow in the wind, wearing a little jean jacket with the sleeves rolled up to let out his baby hands. They were stopped on a street corner she bent over him. I felt liked I'd looked in a mirror to the past. It made me cry for those old days of hope and friendship, before the fall. When a new baby was the hope of the world, our world, the one we were envisioning and building.

I guess what was lost, for a while, is how ongoing that task is. How it doesn't just happen by our hard work and then we get to live in it. It happens, and unhappens, and morphs, and changes, and succeeds, and fails, and births new fears,and new dreams. Some of us are still here, or here again, or left the planet for a while and will maybe be back.

Today, I called the Kiva with a special request, and guess what! Its still here, its still real, its still the heart of the downtown community, and the Kiva came through--the people came through. Because that's always all that can come through. The people. The love.

My friend Sherril Bower who is a clerk there shopped for my groceries for me--cuz I'm house bound--and my son Arlo, born a couple of years after "Eem", stopped by the store which is just blocks from his workplace, to bring me my groceries.

May the circle be unbroken. I'm just spilling over with good feeling right now.

Love to you all.

Body Size as Blessing

artist: Noora K, age 16, Finland

This morning in the tub I thought, hey, after all those years of having a large body, I finally have one that can be completely submerged in a tub full of water. No belly and boobs emerging into the air. Pretty cool. I don't recommend the weight loss method, but it is enjoyable to have a body that can completely soak in warm water without my going to the hot tubs.

What that submerged body looks like is quite another matter, unique in my well fed, always trying to lose weight life. My body is now a deeply wrinkled and creased bag of skin.

Seriously we are so screwed up about what constitutes a healthy body, so certain that thinness is preferable. I remember reading that a woman entering older age is somewhat better off carrying a little extra weight. I see now how having a bit of bod can start one out on an illness or other stress with a resource to help you get through it.

Definitely we are not talking about obesity. After years of nursing and care giving, I am very aware how difficult it is for the patient and the nurses to keep an over sized body comfortable and healthy. Everything--toileting, skin care, mobility, everything--is more difficult and may require special equipment to avoid injury to the patient and the care giver. I strongly recommend maintaining a healthy weight.

However, I am seeing the other side of this picture. During this illness and during the devastating side effects of chemotherapy my body has wasted. I now don't have an ounce of unneeded fat, but I also do not have enough muscle mass. Muscle, when it is adequate will allow me to move, walk, sit, stand, and do tasks without the pain that comes from muscle strain.

I made choices, which included miscalculations, about how to deal with it when I first realized that the chemotherapy, by contributing to demineralization of my bones, had caused compression fractures in my spine. I was in pain at the time, not only from that, in fact possibly not from that at all, but I set about immobilizing my back--resting in correct positions keeping my back straight, resting more, staying off my feet. I did do a few exercises to try to keep the muscles functional. The exercises I did were seriously not enough. I was ill and did not do them regularly. I could have, but I did not. I went often for much of every day into a drifting mindless state, and during a week I might remember to do bed exercises twice for a few minutes. Hardly adequate.

Suffering from the weakness eventually defined itself, and I recognized that I have a very big task in front of me. It got so that shuffling across the house to go to the bathroom was enough to make my back ache. Muscles I wouldn't think of were affected. My handwriting became shaky, my bladder weakened.

The good thing is this is something I can do something about. Affirming that I am healing from my disease, then the task of building my body back becomes very near the top of the list for daily activities. Working carefully I'm getting to where I can do a little "workout" and then rest. I can take a walk.

I've seldom been a disciplined person. I'm still not. This is not discipline, it is motivation, it is hope, it is intent. It's something to do, too. You may be able to imagine how boring it is to be sick. To have just about zero energy for activities, and on top of that to be plagued by the notorious "chemo brain" so that even mental activity becomes null and void.

So in my sudden maturity, suddenly having a body that shows its age after a lifetime of seeming younger than I am, there is this brand new thing. I've become a body builder.