June 26, what about your dreams

The day before the interview I did not feel good. Weak, tired in spite of the kind weather I had yearned for for so long, a sunny fresh spring. I did not feel I was going to be able to take the train to the city the next day, as promised.

Behind the expression of commiseration, a thin but tenacious nuance of disappointment made itself felt in her voice. Appointments are set three and four weeks in advance. Rescheduling is extremely difficult. "You are very tired though, aren't you."

I suggested we do it by phone. I had dreaded a two hour phone interview, yet something had to be done, and we left the appointment stand for the next day.

I prepared by printing the letter I had sent in a while ago, which contained the names of all the medications I take, and why; all the health care providers I see or have seen, why, when, upon whose recommendation. Turned out to be a rather long document which covered the last two years. I brought to the interview room a bottle of water and a few mandarines, although I did not think I was going to eat. I took my medication two hours early. And acting on an impulse I did not think through, neither tried to explain, went to the bathroom to fetch some tissues. Thankfully Luba was there, cleaning. She said, take the whole box. I hesitated and refused, why would I, in fact, need any? I did not have the slightest idea what automatism had made me seek any at all.

The voice at the other end young but thankfully not very young. Thirty something. Nice manner. Used to doing this kind of thing, that is, experienced in dealing with the distraught academic client. Not an easy thing, she admitted from the beginning, this attempt to accommodate the return to work for those whose work is made of 40% of one thing, 40% of another, and 20% of another thing yet. Even insurance companies know this is three jobs in one. While the employer's, that is, the university's strong point, is not flexibility.

This conversation was not going to be about the state of my health. That topic is somebody else's domain. It is the responsibility of the person I talk to every once in a while, she who wants to know if I'm better. "Oh good." Her voice struggles with depression, or despondency, or pure lack of interest, I'm not sure. It takes me some effort to abstain from recommending that she herself seek professional help. (It is not because one works for an insurance company that one is doing better than the rest of the lot.)

This inquiry, or rather interrogation, was to be about dreams. Regardless of the so called medical reality of my condition, and abstraction made of our respective positions, perfect strangers to each other of course, between whom one is to pour out her soul on the confessional mode, while the other, to take notes, literally: in the best of worlds, how do you dream yourself to be, what do you dream to do, from now on?

I have always disliked hypothetical talk. In the classroom it is often the preferred method of demonstration of this or that possibility. "Let's suppose that...". Abstract, non committed reasoning, always disembodied, always indifferent of what things feel or are like. To ask what my dream of the future may be, presupposes that speaking about the future is an easy topic of conversation; after all, why not, we're just speaking, just in case it comes to that. I resent this approach, it has many faults, but the most glaring is the lack of awareness of what an illness like mine does to the concept of future itself.

Of course we understand that it all had to do with my returning to work. I told my young interrogator that, had she called to take my pulse six months ago, I would have said, excitedly almost, yes, by all means, let me go back to my job. It just so happens that in the meantime, for the past few months, I have been going to the city. That allowed me to rediscover, if at a very slow pace, what I might and might not be able to do.

It is one thing to go to Toronto for two days every two weeks, in order to seek therapy; another, to actually go there to work. Not to speak about the fundamental requirement intrinsic to the act of teaching young people. The seventeen to thirty something, mostly inquiring minds, as they are branded, sons and daughters of privilege mostly, are here to discover wonders hidden under the proverbial stone - such things do exist indeed - wonders unveiled by the magic wand of an at once enthusiastic, optimistic, energetic and laid back instructor. The instructor's task, to mainly, wittily, entertain. The students' expectations, quite the opposite of being confronted by a middle aged woman who has just met with some of life's nastier accidents. I did not have, I continued, the emotional stability required by such a demand any longer. Even in the course of this interview, I chocked when faced with the most innocuous of questions: "So then, you came to U of T in 2002?" Or, "do you like your job?"

Can I explain why I such easy questions would bring me to tears? Can I explain what those past ten years mean, in the context of my professional life? What liking your job means, after having spent more than thirty years to become sufficiently qualified?

There is something fundamentally perverse in the presupposition that, while on disability, the employee is to employ herself at getting better, so that she may resume her life from the point where, quite abruptly, she left it. Falling off and out of the normal trajectory came to me, to us, as a powerful, unforgiving and sudden accident. With this fall, something was lost that I cannot, no matter how much I would like to, go find again, intact, waiting to be grasped. Of course, there is some understanding that the work I would be doing should accommodate my present, diminished condition. Yet everybody in the industry, as they call it, knows that the academic profession suffers very little accommodation. It suffers excess under the form of overdoing, but not of underdoing things. University abhors underachievers. Apparently, much more than many other jobs. Hard to know how that is, considering how so much of the current public opinion sees these teaching positions as plum jobs. Do many other professions require quite this much training? Not many. But in a culture which does not privilege learning, the question is not only irrelevant, it is of no interest.

This is another discussion altogether, though. Here the more scary part: if you are deemed able to work, but no accommodation can be arranged with your employer, the kind academia lets go of you so you may seek employment elsewhere. I suggested selling shoes was not an option, having done that already, when I was a student in search of better things.

Thankfully, the conversation did lead to an answer on my part. What I want, I said, and I know this to be true, and not a reaction to the barrage of questions, is to keep being just as I am now. I want to be as I am, keep doing what I do. A year and a half ago I did not dare hope I was going to be here, and yet here I am.  I can only be grateful for what I have received and only wish to hold on to these lovely new days for a while. If, from the point of view of the employer, it means retirement, than that is what I want. In fact, in a not too distant past, I had even put a number on it: 61. In those days I was still part of the plan according to which, when to leave and make room for the many young people waiting in line, would be my decision.

My interrogator was somewhat surprised, yet, as soon as I put the word retirement on it, agreed with my position: what is lost is lost, we cannot go back and recover it.  Getting better can only mean, essentially, finding a way of life which will accept that something irreversible has happened. The accommodation cannot, and should not come from the employer, but first, from the one who has, at the hands of life, known loss.

June 19, Lavandula

I have finished this still life on June 19, the day after the events I describe in "what about your dreams". I do not know to what extent that conversation helped me finish this particular work, but I do know clearly it was a day of great energy and relief. Somehow that interview brought my ambivalence to a hopeful resolution.

June 14, the touch of friendship

I am trying to understand what has changed around me while so many things have changed within. I have often, particularly during those long winter nights, considered the friendships which are alive and still tie me to so many people I love; and the withered friendships, which have little by little dried out and sometimes simply died. To which, to my enchantment, I must add those friendships which were hibernating but have come to new life over the last couple of years.

With those close to me, with whom I speak often about such matters, I exchange regretful thoughts about the lost bonds. Most everybody suffers, usually in secret, the loss of a friend who has stopped calling, or is too busy and has little time to spare, either because of work or family obligations. I have myself been there. For years, because of work, I did neglect those who did not belong to the same sphere. Meanwhile, I admired people who knew how to nourish friendships other than the working relationship with which they are often confused.

My mother had eight siblings, six sisters and two brothers. Back home, she had few friends, and thought she could only have few, given the close bond to her sisters. Once we came to Canada, she made friends, of very different ages and occupations, both women and men. She had the gift of receiving people and giving them the attention they needed, the love they did not find elsewhere. She was sought after to the point of never feeling lonely. She would have been appalled to know that I have chosen to live in the country. In solitude, that is. The means of communication we have now, including this blog, were not available in her day. But more importantly, she was not a person of words, but of touch. Of smile. And kiss. All that cannot happen on the keyboard, no matter how hard we try.

I am maybe beginning to answer the implicit opening question of this note. It is certainly possible to keep friends by corresponding with them, and what a lovely thing it is, when that happens. But friendship without touch, what kind is it?

I will go so far as to say that it has been the friendships where touch was not possible which have died first.

I know it is one of my favorite topics, that of the feeling of well being imparted by those who lay their hands on us. A few professions, less and less frequent, allow for that still. Definitely not the medical profession any longer, regardless of the lost benefits of such contact. But nowadays we have gone so far as to refrain from shaking hands for fear of contagion, and how sad it is to have this permanent, never breached distance between people who never find out what it feels like, to hold the hand of another, or to kiss another's cheek. An uncle of mine used to tell the story of my mother's younger years, when she was still childless. She used to stop strangers, women with children in their arms, on the street, and kiss their children. Stop them in order to give the stranger child a kiss. Considering how lovely she was, I am sure nobody minded, except to say that she obviously needed her own to hold and caress. But can you imagine that kind of a scene today? Here and now? The least you would expect is outrage and accusations of physical abuse, if not mental disturbance.

Maybe this is why nobody knows how to hold and kiss those who are not directly, that is legally, entitled to such treatment. And yes, I did have, in my time, friends whom I held and kissed in spite of themselves, and yes, because it was against their habit or wish, I believe I did end up loosing them.

I do not mean to say that this is why those friendships withered. Not at all. I am sure that graver, more important reasons (if such a thing exists) lead to it. But I dare say that I could have predicted that severance, had I cared to, in the days when all was still well. They say you cannot force a person to love you. Maybe the same is true of people's tolerance for affectionate gestures.

There is, of course, touch without affection.

We had to go to Kingston again the other day, for a visit with the hematologist.

The day was glorious. We trust our heads in the fresh, windy sun, happy to finally meet with a good day while in that lakeshore town. Colin was taking one of his days off, those reserved for doctors' appointments. We had found out the address of a place which offers a few varieties of vegetarian and vegan burgers. Imagine! Not one, but a few kinds to choose from! We were impressed and promised to return.

It is odd to utter these words when taking leave of any doctor, but particularly of an oncologist: see you soon. Or worse: hope to see you soon. One would rather say: farewell. There is one oncologist, the radiologist, whom I like to see often. The hematologist, much less.

That is maybe why we had not seen him in a year and a half. He was gruff when entering the room, for of course something had gone wrong and we had fallen by the side-road of the system. This is a very competent researcher, who does transplants, the last and latest in myeloma treatment options. I still hope I will not have to belong to his group of research subjects. Yet of course I very well might.

He informed us we were there to ascertain whether myeloma had advanced, spread elsewhere. Of course we knew why we were there, but that matters little. To reaffirm that sorry reason was necessary, just in case any trace of the earlier well being remained with us. A lot of blood had been drawn of my arm just before the visit, but of course he had no results to look at, so he looked at one of the last reports in the chart, and for a while seemed to fall in a trance. As if an enormous problem had taken hold of him and he could not even breathe under its spell. As if speechless.

I watched him very closely, and so did Colin. Later Colin would say that he had probably drawn a blank. It happens. Yet we all came somewhat diminished from that spell, quite the opposite of an angel's passing. Imagine one of those powerful silences before a revelation. In this case, we were left with apprehension and a sense of the meaninglessness of it all.

Do you want to see me in three weeks or three months? You guessed, I chose the three months. If things are indeed found to be as we hope, if the myeloma has not multiplied, these tests will hopefully be enough to keep us away from him until september.

He recommended another full body X-ray, or bone scan. The technician was a very young Asian man, of mild manner and barely perceptible smile. He had me placed for the twelve views with most care, just like in the old days, when you went for that important, one in a decade memento of your life stages. When the photographer took great pains to have you look your best. Look as if in the direction of a desirable object lost in the distance, or as if thoughtful; press your shoulders back; incline, or hold your head high; smile, or not, according to the state of your teeth.

While in this camera obscura, the X-ray technician, unwillingly of course, had me think about my present topic, touch. He held firm and with no hesitation oriented my head, my shoulders, my arms. He repositioned my hips, pushed my shoulder blades together, time and again checked for the waist line on whose placement the alignment of the rest of the body relies. When we were done, another memento of the state of my bones, from head to toe, was obtained, on whose clarity so much depends for the next while.

A witness for a mere ten minutes he was, for sure, a very distant witness, but whose touch I have to trust. We have gotten so used to snapshots, that friendship herself begins to look, at length, like those old, half yellow half effaced photographs. We are resigned to loosing even those who have accompanied us for a long while, and nod accordingly: yes indeed, there's an end to everything, it is in the order of things. Nothing to regret. Nothing to be nostalgic about. After all, who cares about those old photographs any longer, which tried so hard to show you in your best light, which tried to make you look lovable, so somebody would want to call you their friend?

June 1, what feels good

A day I awaited with so much anticipation and yet a day which did not start well. By 6 in the morning, Ben was barking his 'I am bored' bark. 'I want you to come down' bark. 'I have something to show you.' 'I have done something I am not sure about.' 'On the one paw I might have done something wrong, on the other, I am super excited  because what I have done will certainly elicit a rise of you guys.'
 

I came wobbling down the stairs and took a comprehensive look at the lower ground. This one was about shoes. Or rather, slippers. The last ones Ben has halved were John's, Colin's father. We offered temporary replacement. John was a good sport about it. Right now the situation a bit icy. Colin loves his clogs. They're one item he cares about and should put away at night before going to bed, given past experiences with objects of all kinds: feather pillows (3), blankets (2), oranges, bread, just finished and ready to eat salads, pens, pins, screws, cushion buttons, rugs, pet brushes, plastic bags, plastic containers, pretty much anything that happens to be near his nose while he's waiting for us to appear from the upper floors where we please to hide at night, behind the dog metal gate which, of course, has been chewed on too.

Colin was not too upset. On the bright side it was maybe time for a new pair of such comfortable, foot imprint-on-the-insole kind of clogs. While making the second round of lattes, I realized that Ben's bark had awakened me from a dream where I was trying on a couple of exquisite summer, walk-on-the-water sandals, from the store a friend had just opened, or, rather, was trying to open soon.

By the time we got to the yoga factory the day had declared itself, soft and humid. In the driveway three poppies in full bloom said a cheerful hello, while the lilacs, already loosing the grapes of their youth, were sleeping in.

We carried our respective mats, a bit thicker and softer than yoga asceticism would require. Mine having been laid a few more times than Colin's, which is brand new. We have bought his in Montreal, a few months ago, when, after visiting with friends, we happened to stop by the Forum, on our way out of the city. Looking for pastries, as I usually am when we leave any city at all. We had decided to do yoga together at home. And what a good omen, that that yoga mat should come from a place Colin worshipped as a child. Since not much is left of that universe, but a bronze statue in the midst of what looks like a void waiting to be filled, derelict and sad.

The session, two hours long; the asanas responded to my description of Colin's more present and pressing aura of need: he is the one who carries three men on his shoulders, three male colleagues, who, irrespective of their material weight, may at times weigh quite heavy on his sleepless nights.

In spite of that, it was the figure of the child which played in my mind during our practice together. Within that space, I am usually in the presence of women. And since I do not know them, I try to be discreet and look in their direction as little as possible. It is a kind of privacy I appreciate in this group practice. With Colin though, of course, it felt very different. It is exhilarating to be doing something we had never done together before. Couples who have lived together for a long time know what I am speaking of. It is one of the secrets of a lasting couple, to invent new things to do, and, of course, new things to talk about. Not always easy. And I am not speaking of high degrees of danger, exoticism or eccentricity either. I know of women who would love to have their partners partake in their yoga practice. For the men, it is close to impossible to accede to this simple yet so meaningful demand. I do not pretend to know what makes it difficult for them. But I will admit it was with an extreme and grateful surprise that I heard Colin say yes. 'Do you accede to your spouse's demand, that you shall go with her once a week,  to practice yoga, in illness and in health? Yes, I do.' That's pretty much how it felt.

Of course I realized quite early that I would not be able to direct him in his practice at home, let alone both of us. Those are skills I would have yet to acquire.

Going back to the figure which playfully occupied me during this first session, the figure of the child. It appeared to me that this practice, at least in its beginning stages, has a lot to do with how children employ their bodies, manner which they are forced to renounce as they
become adults. And I doubt it is only a question of easy transposition. Making the names of the asanas accessible in English, as they say. The fact is, in yoga, one is brought to recall many of the positions one practiced naturally as a child. As Karen, our instructor, puts it so well, and often: whatever feels good, whatever feels right. It feels good to lay on your back and take hold of your feet, or toes, while bringing your knees close to your chest. It is rightfully called 'happy child', even if in translation or transposition only. It feels good to lay on your knees, face down, cheek on the mat, arms by the sides of your head, bum up. This bum up, face down, which we so rarely do just for fun, when not searching for an earring lost under the bed, where do you go to practice as a way of freeing yourself of whatever you carry on your shoulders? Where do you dare thread one arm under the other, while laying on your face and knees, bum up? Both our dogs, on the other paw, know all about it.

Children, dogs, cats, warriors, trees, bows and arrows, bridges, and yes, the corpse, all come to brighten your day. And there, in the aptly called yoga factory, you are allowed to make of the bum up, head down, arms hanging loose whichever way feels good, a purpose in itself. It was, of course, a special delight to have Colin there with me. His wide hockey player shoulders turning, slowly, to the left and then to the right, long, straight arms perfectly parallel to the ceiling, or to the sky, torso gracefully sustaining a lighter head, for once only attentive to the unhurried rhythm of his breath. Spine long, eyes gazing softly, stealing a glance in my direction now and then, like school children amused by their secret plan to shyly behave. 

And then we laid down for the last asana, that of the Shava. While Karen's voice was reciting all the places, along the body, which our breath should visit, embrace and release, a bird, maybe a robin, was chanting her own privilege outside. Clear and distinct bird calls addressed to the fortunate day. We answered Namaste in return. Somehow, it felt utterly right to do yoga in the country: barefooted, and attentive to our dog's early example of doing what feels good. Oh! that trustworthy destroyer of all those worldly, comfortable, material things!