Dec 20

Jukai Ceremony

A New Yorker cover that made an impression. One of many!

“I always think that one of the easiest ways to remember to love the world is to remember that you have to leave it at some point.” –Ada Limón, Where the Light Comes From

On Saturday, I will take part in a Jukai ceremony at my Zen Temple. My Buddhist path is one that started many years ago, and this weekend’s event is a milestone. The first religious ceremony I’ve ever participated in and most likely the only.

I credit my parents for raising me with no religious tradition. My mom was a lapsed Catholic who experienced the cruelty and misery of the Church in a variety of ways. The fear of hell stayed with her for her entire life. She told me that she knew she didn’t want her kids to have the type of experience she’d had. However, we had an image of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on our refrigerator and an image of the Last Supper in our dining room, so the iconography was there, but I don’t remember ever praying as a family over meals or anything.

My great grandmother, who lived next door to us, was the most outwardly religious person. She regularly watched the televangelists on one of the three tv channels we could get in rural Ohio in the 1980s, and sent the preachers money. A point of irritation with my grandma and dad considering none of us had much money. My dad never spoke of any type of belief until toward the end of his life, when he asked to speak to a preacher while in Hospice care. I think he had a vague belief in God…the way many people do. Mostly agnostic but not put off by the possibility. But also not worried by it.

I was exposed to Buddhism as a teenager when I became deeply interested in the counterculture of the 1960s and the Beat culture of the 1950s. Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac all wrote about and spoke about Zen Buddhism, with Gary Snyder becoming a true practitioner of Buddhism and maybe Ginsberg too. Kerouac was more a dabbler. Alan Watts also brought Zen to the masses during this time and even earlier, though I’ve never read anything by Watts.

Zen Buddhism always resonated to me. The only certainty is the moment you’re in, so you should appreciate it. Simple but not easily done without intention. And there is more to it than that, but I’ll stop there.

I never practiced zazen (seated meditation) with any regularity, but I read a lot. And I tried to be mindful with varying degrees of success. But as I’ve grown and as I’ve lost family members and friends, I discovered I wanted to focus my time more intentionally on following this path. Grief and loss are powerful motivators to wake up to the world.

Zen is about waking up. That’s the simplest explanation I can provide and language is an inadequate tool for trying to talk about it. It’s easy to get in our own way or get caught up with trying to explain. No explanations are necessary.

Many years ago, perhaps when iPods were becoming more and more common—so around 2008 or so? (EDIT! I found the cover (pictured above) and it was 2005)— I remember seeing a New Yorker magazine cover of a man sitting on a bench listening to his iPod while a bird sang its song in the branches above. It hit me immediately. I don’t want to go through the world, missing out on what’s happening around me. The annoying, the beautiful, the repetitive, the heartbreaking. I want to do my best to be with each moment completely. Because we have to say goodbye to everything eventually and I want to soak it up in the meantime and spread ease to others while I’m here. That’s what I’m committing to on Saturday.

Sep 27

I felt great! And then…

The Death card can represent major life changes, transitions, and new beginnings.

On May 31, I felt magnificent. Four weeks earlier, I’d had my fallopian tubes removed, and on this day, I was meeting my ob-gyn for a post-surgery check up. The surgery was for sterilization. I wanted to get off birth control and see what stage of the menopause cycle I might be in. But the prospect of a late-in-life baby gave me nightmares, so this was a solution. I knew that removing fallopian tubes also reduced the risk of ovarian cancer, so that made the decision easier.

I sat and watched as pregnant couples came and went through the office. When I saw the doctor, I told her I felt great. I had been intentionally (and successfully) losing weight and doing strength training. The laparoscopic incisions had healed with no issues. As we finished the brief meeting I said,  “Just so I am clear: any issues with my period going forward will be menopause related and not pregnancy related?” “Yes, that’s right,” she said. 

Reader, I could have floated out of the building. I left, passing a pregnant couple on my way out,  internally wishing them the best, but so grateful that wouldn’t be me. The sun was out, the temperature was glorious, and I was ready to move on with the next stage of life.

I should have sensed something was awry when my appetite dropped to nothing. After gaining weight earlier in the year, I had committed to being more mindful of my calorie intake. Sometimes it was difficult. My appetite has always ebbed and flowed with my menstrual cycle, so some days I would be satiated easily and other days I would be ravenous regardless of how much I had eaten. After my surgery, I was seldom hungry. I could go most of the day without eating, and then only do so because I knew I needed to. This is great, I thought to myself. For the first time in my entire life, my appetite is mild and quiet. If this is a side effect of menopause, then so be it! (Side note: Disordered eating, anyone?)

I also started having hot flushes. Not enough to disrupt my life, as some people experience, but noticeable. It only bothered me when I was in the middle of a conversation with someone and I would feel my face suddenly prickle with sweat. I wondered what it looked like to the person I was speaking with.

In early July, we were in Maine and had a glorious time. But July also holds some difficult anniversaries for me. My brother died on July 18 and his birthday is July 31. I had wanted to go to D.C. to see his headstone at Arlington, but wasn’t able to make it happen. I decided to take the 31st off to honor him in some other way.

The weekend before his birthday, I started to feel a bit blue. I was also getting hung up on existential dilemmas. Like, I’ve lost my mom, dad, grandma, brother. Part of what made life so enjoyable was sharing it with them. So now what? Of course, I know losing everyone is part of life. It’s something we meditate on in Zen. It’s connected to the First Noble Truth. It’s the basis of the Five Remembrances. But I had expected my brother to be with me for many more years. Without him, I had lost the foundational years of my life. No one to remember with me. No one to remember me. How can they all just be gone?

I cried a lot that week. I cried during a meeting with one of my Zen teachers. I cried to my friends at work. I cried to Spence nearly every day. I stood in his office after driving home from work one day, telling him how I wanted our lives to become more expansive as we aged, but with the loss of so many family members, and especially of my brother, it felt the opposite was happening.

Something else flickered up during this time, which set this apart from typical sadness/grief/mourning. I am a big fan of crying. It’s cathartic. I’m not embarrassed to cry in front of anyone. I am always in mourning, even when I am happy and feeling great. I am always filled with gratitude for all I’ve had and I am always filled with grief for losing so many wonderful people—it’s all twisted like vines around my heart. But going into August, I was also experiencing high levels of anxiety and episodes of depersonalization, and that was atypical.

I had my first experience with depersonalization when I was about 7, but was quickly able to shake my head and get out of it. At 19, I had it for a longer period of time and it was a terrible. You can find the exact definitions online, but for me, it feels like a hyper awareness of being alive. Of being in your own skin. Of knowing you’ll see out of only one pair of eyes for all your life. Everything that is normal feels strange. For me, it’s also accompanied by panic and the corresponding waves of adrenaline. I’m constantly telling myself that everything is fine, but the dread burns in my chest like a clot of lava. At 19, I pushed through it and swallowed it down, and flicked my wrist with a rubber band whenever I felt anxious to remind myself that everything was fine, that this was Normal Life, and IT WAS FINE. Eventually, I got busy with life, transferred to a new college to pursue my degree, and came out of it all. My worst episode was in 2008. It was the first time I sought help from my doctor, at the encouragement of my mom and Spence, and I’m glad I did. I won’t go into all the details because that would make this post twice as long, but it was a difficult time that eventually got better. 

And I’ve been my usual self ever since…until the start of August when the waves of panic and the feeling of depersonalization returned along with a knot of anxiety in my chest. Because I’ve experienced it before and recognized it for what it is, it was a bit less scary (much less scary than when I was 19 or 33), but it still felt indescribably awful.

Imagine:

Everything feels foggy and dreamy.

You feel like a boulder is sitting on your chest.

It seems your Third Eye has grit in it.

It feels like you’re squinting all the time.

It feels like your eyes are burning and you have to stretch them wide open all the time.

Surges of adrenaline rush over you at unexpected times and frequently.

Everything feels unusual and strange and surreal.

You feel outside of yourself.

You feel hyper aware of yourself moving through the day.

When these symptoms flared for the first time in many, many years, I wondered: is it related to menopause? I quickly turned to Reddit where I found a group dedicated to questions and conversation around menopause. I learned that drops in estrogen can cause panic, anxiety and other issues. It’s often the culprit for postpartum depression. Some women described feeling like they wanted to crawl out of their skin and go running down the street…similar to how I was feeling. I read about how well people felt after starting hormone replacement therapy. I text messaged friends who are also at this stage of life and quizzed them on their anxiety levels. I started listening to audiobooks on menopause. Finally, I reached out to my ob-gyn and—thankfully—she saw me within a day of my call.

When I entered her office, I started my story the way I started it in this post. When I last saw you in May, I was feeling great, I said. “But,” she said, sensing that my next sentence would start with that word. “I take it that’s changed.” I told her everything. She was funny and insightful and empathetic and prescribed me low-dose HRT with no issues. And reader. The change was noticeable within two days. Slowly the anxiety loosened, the panic became less frequent, less powerful. Eventually, over weeks, everything went back to my version of normal. Today, I feel perfectly well again. (And my appetite has come back to life.) 

It was a good reminder that our bodies are not static. They are magnificent machines with hormones swirling and organs beating, breathing, filtering. It’s humbling (and a bit scary) to realize how much is outside of your control when it comes to emotional regulation. During those difficult weeks, I could meditate and breathe deeply, but it didn’t alleviate the panic/adrenaline surges or the crying jags. It helped that I have a good sense of what is “normal” for me and I could tell that things were not right, and that I wanted to get to the bottom of it asap.

The message the people in the Reddit group kept communicating to each other was: you don’t have to suffer. I never thought this would be my menopausal experience, but I’m glad to live in a time when others are sharing their experiences and giving advice. I can’t imagine all the ways people have suffered in silence (and many still do).

Jul 13

On documenting everything

One of my favorite views from Maine—from the most eastern point of the United States.

“Take a picture!” I said to Spence as we were sitting on the porch of our waterfront rental in Maine. It was our first morning, and I was sitting with my dog Jojo and wanted it recorded. He did so and we continued relaxing, but it made me think about this impulse to record every moment these days.

It’s odd to me that we have the impulse—and the ability—to photograph everything in our lives now. We took only a few family vacations when I was a kid, most travel being out of my family’s budget, and I’ve found a single photograph from those trips—me, my dad and my brother standing at some marker at a rest area (I think) and nothing around us for miles. It must have been Kansas considering the flat surroundings. My mom not even in the picture since she was the photographer and probably the one who suggested taking the photo. I barely remember these trips now, just a flash of memory of being with my cousins in El Paso, of hearing so much Spanish, of being car sick in the camper that my dad pulled with his truck. My mom told me that at one of the rest stops (maybe the one where we took the photo), I said I was not going any further. They could continue on, but I was staying right where I was. They all climbed into the vehicle and said, okay, see you later! And I sat at the picnic table and said bye!! They drove away, heading toward the exit, and I sat at the table watching them, unbothered. Then dad turned the vehicle around, drove back to me and said something along the lines of Get your ass in the car. So I did. I feel like I can remember this, but it may just be me imagining mom’s story.

A single photo taken during the drive to and from Texas. More were taken, of course, when we were with our family, but even then I’ve found only a few that remain. When my uncle Terry died recently, I dug through my boxes of photos and found only a handful from when he was a toddler, and even fewer from when he was an adult. Of course, his wife and kids would have had more images from their holidays and such. When I was at an internship in Pennsylvania in 1997, he picked me up in his semi-truck and gave me a ride back to our hometown to visit my family. Back then, I climbed into the rear of the truck and slept. It didn’t occur to me to take photos, even though I was studying photojournalism, and in Pennsylvania for a photo internship. I was working with a film camera, which likely drove my decision to put it aside. Processing, color correcting, printing—it was a lot of work. Today at that age, with an iPhone in hand, I would have taken selfies of me in the truck and Terry in the background. Photos of Terry driving, etc. And now that Terry is gone, it would be nice to have photos like that. But I still have the memory of the ride.

I have an odd photo of my dad, riding our indoor exercise bike in his robe, smoking a pipe, and looking over his left shoulder at the photographer and smirking. I don’t know if he was seriously riding the bike like this and my mom decided it was ridiculous enough for a photo, or whether he was clowning. Who rides an exercise bike in their robe? But there aren’t any before or after photos. Just this one.

I have a wonderful photo of my brother and his best friend from high school. His best friend is hamming it up for the camera and he’s got his arm around Gary and is pulling him into the photo and my brother has his face scrunched up laughing as he pulls away from his friend. Only a third of my brother’s face is seen. When I was considering this photo for his memorial, I couldn’t decide if it showed enough of him to use. His friend is the one who is fully seen. But it was the only image captured of this particular moment. I lamented that there wasn’t a series of photos taken of this moment, like we would and could do today, where we see the sequence of Gary pulling away laughing, maybe turning his body away totally and walking from the scene. Today, we could take enough photos in fast succession to make a little animation out of the moment. But then it was just mom’s cumbersome point and shoot camera with a flash, and when you pushed the shutter you didn’t know exactly what moment you were capturing. And who knew when you would see the photos; first you had to use up all the film. (I did use the photo in the memorial. I felt it captured the relationship so well, even if you could only see Gary a little bit.)

Recently, I was trying to capture an Eastern Phoebe in flight. She had her eggs in a nest on our porch, and when we came outside to sit, she would fly to our lamp post and perch. I brought out my brother’s expensive camera and expensive lens and waited for her to move. I chose the fastest shutter burst and when I sensed she was about to fly—SnapSnapSnapSnapSnapSnapSnap. I took a dozen photos in just a few seconds, capturing every move she made in that time. I did this a couple more times, and when it was quiet again, camera in my lap, I said to Spence, this is the opposite of the decisive moment. This is pointing the camera and capturing every moment that goes by. I am no Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Bresson is credited with coining the term the decisive moment. You wait for all the elements in a photo to come together and you snap the shutter at just the right time to capture that moment. The photo of his I most associate with this term is one of a man leaping over a puddle, foot just above water, beautiful reflection of the jumper and wonderful composition. Bresson used Leica film cameras, so there were no shutter bursts. Only the single shutter click. Timing mattered and he was a master.

Today it seems people videotape/photograph everything. How many videos have I seen on Tiktok that made me wonder why the person had a camera recording at this particular moment. People wear GoPros, have cameras running in their car, are taking video selfies, are ready to point their phone in the direction of any hint of kerfuffle. Sometimes this is for the best—evidence in a car accident, proof that the enraged interaction started with someone spouting racist bullshit, a truly unbelievable moment captured. It also feels like a self-imposed surveillance state. I remember years ago, when I was living in Florida, I was at a mall Christmas shopping and decided to take a break. I went to sit down on a bench and I missed, landing my ass straight on the floor. I don’t know how it happened, but I remembered—even then, pre-2008—thinking, wow, I hope there isn’t video evidence of this! Now it’s just as likely as not that there would be and it could be turned into a viral video without me even knowing. (Until someone recognized me and alerted me to the fact.)

I recently deactivated my Instagram and Facebook, after reading some awful news out of Philadelphia that some 8th graders had “weaponized social media” to target their teachers. They created fake Tiktok accounts using images they found on the teachers’ social media accounts, and slandered the teachers in awful ways. It bothered me so much that I decided to stop sharing my own content on the accounts, even though they are private (because nothing is really private when you share it online. How often have I explained this to students who shared something on their personal, private account that was then screenshot and shared more widely?). I have work accounts to use for my job, so I don’t need personal accounts. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with social media—feeling like I want to share all the interesting moments of my life and then feeling like I’m being too solipsistic. A friend of mine recently told me about the incredible traveling he’d done and I asked him about photos. He said he didn’t take any, choosing to live in the moment. I was stunned and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I true practice in Zen meditation, really. No interruptions to grab a camera, pull out the phone. Just here, now—seeing.

I would find it too challenging to not take any photos, and he wasn’t suggesting others do so. But I like the idea of being more discerning. I currently have over 30,000 images on my phone. A handful I have “favorited” so they are in their own folder and I can look at them whenever I want. I am grateful for the images of my mom, dad, Gary, grandma, Kim…people who are gone and that I miss deeply. The photos show the date and time it was taken, a time capsule for wonderful moments with people I won’t see again.

Not using Instagram and Facebook to share my life in photos also reminds me how few people I have in my life to share photos with directly. I miss my mom and brother all the time, and it becomes more acute when I have a photo to share that doesn’t seem like everyone I know would want to see it. My mom and brother would ALWAYS want to see it. Whether it was a selfie, or some funny scene I found. At my request, Spence has taken photos of me in an outfit that I like, or a silly photo of me and my critters, and then I’ve paused and realized I don’t really have anyone to share it with. To share it widely seems to be saying Look At Me! Nothing wrong with that, but something I’m becoming less inclined to do as I try to keep my focus less on myself and more on the people and experiences around me. But my mom, she loved those texts because she was my mom, and no one saw me more clearly. She would critique the outfit, critique my haircut, critique how my skin looked—because she cared deeply about me how I existed in the world. And my brother, one of the last photos I sent to him a fews weeks before he died was a panoramic from the top of a mountain in Maine that had me making a ridiculous face on one side and then the incredible view all around. He responded pretty quickly about the magical view, and he responded even though he was already struggling at this point, fatigued and weak, though we thought it was from the treatment and he would eventually rebound. But that turned out not to be the case.

I suppose it’s a matter of balance. Putting the phone away when you are in conversation with a friend. Snapping a single photo and then putting the phone away. For me, sharing images directly with friends who might be most interested, rather than with everyone I’ve known for the past 15 years. Maybe the memory is more important than the photo sometimes. But also, the photo can capture the memory for the future. So prioritizing. But striving to stay in the moment whenever possible.

And also, doing whatever makes you happy. Photographing everything, photographing nothing—whatever you want. It’s not so serious, after all. Just enjoy.

Photo at 4:15 a.m. (approx) in Maine. For two nights in a row, the moon was just above the horizon with the sunlight seeping through. When I finally decided to set my alarm to get up and capture the photo, the moon had moved a bit higher than I had expected. But I took it anyway.
Oct 1

How my dog’s bite saved me

My hand the day after my dog bit me.

A little more than a year ago, I developed a deep craving for baby carrots. We always had a bag in the fridge, and more often than not it would molder in the vegetable drawer. I wanted to like them more than I did, but even with hummus available, I didn’t eat them with any regularity. That is until one day when I decided to snack on a carrot and it satiated some sort of craving I didn’t realize I had. It felt good; it tasted good; I wanted more of them. I started buying bag after bag of baby carrots and would go through a 16 oz bag in a couple of days. When my husband would go shopping, the only item I needed more of was carrots. I packed them in my purse to have whenever I needed one. I started buying the two pound bags so I wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store as often during the week, but I would still make quick work of them. I would lie in bed at night, reading a book and randomly say to Spence, “You know what would be really good right now. A carrot.” We would be driving somewhere and I would say, “I really wish I had some carrots with me.” At times, Spence would question the health of eating so many carrots. I was nothing short of addicted to them, which is never a good attitude to have toward anything. Not even something healthy. I Googled carrot cravings and would read stories about people whose skin turned orange from eating so many. I hadn’t reached that point, surprisingly. I mostly wanted to know if a sudden and intense passion for carrots indicated some sort of nutrient deficiency. It wasn’t clear from the web search.

In April of this year, my dog Lucy bit my index finger when I was trying to keep her from attacking our other dog. It was a bad bite—she cracked off a small piece of my knuckle. Five days of antibiotics didn’t relieve the swelling in my finger, so the urgent care team directed me to the E.R. for liquid antibiotics. The place was busy, so I sat on a cot in the hallway waiting to be seen. They did an x-ray of my finger, which is how I learned about the chipped knuckle. Eventually a nurse came over to take blood. “Why do you need to take blood,” I asked. “Oh, it’s part of our standard procedure to check a patient’s panel and make sure everything looks okay.” She made her draw and then I went on listening to a podcast on my phone, grateful that I had my earbuds with me.

A while later, the E.R. doctor came over to me and asked how I was feeling. “Okay,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you your hemoglobin levels are low,” she asked. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean really, really low. Like, I should offer you a blood transfusion,” she said. I scrunched my face. “Really?” “Yes,” she said. “You’re feeling okay?” “I’m feeling like I usually do,” I said. “You look okay,” she responded. “But your iron levels are at 6.6 and typically anything under 7 requires a blood transfusion.” (I learned later that normal is 12-18) “That can’t be right,” I told her. “We can run the bloodwork again if you want,” the doctor said. “Maybe it’s a mistake.” “Let’s do that,” I responded.

The next result showed my blood iron even lower. I was flummoxed. I declined the blood transfusion, but was sent home with a prescription for iron and instructions to follow up with my primary care physician within ten days. I was in between PCPs at this point, but had an appointment to meet my new doctor in a month, so decided to keep taking iron in the meantime and discuss with my PCP at my first appointment with her.

I’ve been vegan for six years and I know the vegan diet often needs supplementation, but too much iron or b12 also causes problems. I had always assumed I was getting enough of these vitamins in my food, so I didn’t want to risk the problems that occur if you took too much in supplementation. Based on all the various tests that followed my visit to the E.R., the anemia was caused by diet, and more bloodwork showed I also needed b12 supplementation.

And as my iron levels improved, my craving for carrots vanished. Suddenly I was back to my usual feelings about the orange vegetable, which was total ambivalence. I didn’t even finish the bag that was half empty in my fridge. I knew these two things had to be connected—my anemia and my obsessive craving for carrots. Just last night, I did a google search on the two topics and learned of other cases where people had anemia and an out-of-the-blue desire for carrots. It’s called pica, a type of eating disorder. Most of the time it’s when people want to eat non-food items. A common craving for people with anemia is dirt. But when you have a nutritional deficiency that is triggering a compulsive eating of one type of food, that is also called pica.

Now my numbers are up and I’m feeling dynamic and energetic. I’m actually amazed at all the symptoms I ignored, assuming they were from being out of shape or depressed, since I’m still mourning my brother’s death. I would get winded SO easily while walking uphill…not a problem I had before but one I attributed to not exercising enough. I was tired often, wanting to nap. In the winter, my lips were cracked and peeling constantly. My fingernails were thin and breaking. All of these were symptoms. And untreated anemia can be life threatening—just a slow sapping of your life force. I give Lucy credit for saving my life, and I’m kidding only a little. I don’t know why my most recent doctor hadn’t checked my iron levels during my annual physical, but because Lucy bit me and sent me to the E.R., I caught the numbers when they were dangerously low and was able to turn it around.

Jan 27

It’s Sunny Today and it Helps

My altar

It has been a difficult start to 2023. Already, toward the end of 2022, I noticed I was not moving and exercising nearly as much as I should. However, I didn’t want to. I didn’t feel like running. I didn’t feel like taking walks most days either, though I would typically try and get out around the lake while at work. I know I’m in mourning. Will always be in some form of mourning. Have been in mourning for so long. I come back to my brother’s death so often—how there was hope and then there was none. Mom lived with her diagnoses for many many years. Dad lived with his for three. There’s a level of processing that happens during those years that doesn’t take away the grief, but provides time to reflect, prepare. I have had a number of dreams since Gary’s death where I’m sure he’s not dead but just lost. In one, I was looking for him and thought I heard him in another room and was frantic to see him to let him know that people thought he was dead, but I knew he wasn’t. In another—a dream when I was in the throes of covid—I was sitting with him and told him I didn’t think he was dead, but that he had just been misplaced in another dimension. Basically, my heart is broken. But one doesn’t get through life without a heart broken into pieces over and over.

And 2023 started with covid. On 12/30/22 I thought I had a sinus infection and didn’t give it a second thought. At 2:15 a.m. on 12/31/22, I woke up and felt a blockiness in my chest—like a lung full of congestion. I leapt out of bed and took a test that came back positive almost immediately (I barely had to wait 3 minutes to see the positive line). I took another, thinking something might be off with a test that turned positive so quickly, but the second one did the same. I moved into the guest room to quarantine and spent a hellacious week in there. I had heard from friends that their experience with covid was mild, but mine was definitely not. Coughing wasn’t the primary symptom though it was one. It was mostly my head and sinuses and body aches. My faithful companion Jojo seldom left my side, which I appreciated so much. She left only to eat and potty and then came right back and stayed by my side. Spence took a photo of me asleep with Jojo sitting next to me, looking over her shoulder at him. I didn’t know he took it at the time (a perk/con of living with a photojournalist), but when he showed it to me after I was better, I was shocked at the fact that I looked ready for the coffin. Completely drained of color. I did survive, happily, and am so grateful to my immune system, but that time being beaten up from the inside out as my immune system fought the covid virus did not leave me feeling ready to get up and move my body once the fight was over. I was tired for days and days, even after I was ostensibly over covid. And I am better today than I have been, but still dragging a bit when it comes to exercising for its own sake. Last week, Spence and I went on a 4.3 mile hike and I felt invigorated when we were finished, but also thirsty and a bit achey. I came home and slept for 2 hours. The question I’m looking at now is how do I return to a routine of movement? One that I look forward to again? (The cold weather doesn’t inspire me to get outside, unless I’m heading to the woods.) Considering a treadmill, but maybe a space for resistance work is better? I don’t know.

In late 2022, I spoke with my therapist at length about grief, my brother, mom and dad, and how sometimes it feels like I don’t have anyone anymore, even as I know that’s untrue. I have Spence, who is my favorite person on this earth, and terrific friends. But losing your entire nuclear family is unmooring. I miss them all the time. She and I discussed the future and finding things to look forward to or setting goals. She reminded me of some work goals I had set and met in an earlier timeframe, and when I turned 40, that was the year of running and getting to my first half-marathon. Some weeks after that conversation, I realized what I wanted to turn my attention to more fully: Buddhism. I have been informally studying and reading about Buddhism since I was 16, when I was introduced to it by the Beat writers. It has always, always resonated with me deeply and helped me in so many ways when my parents were living with cancer—remembering to live in the moment and not to get carried away by what ifs. Not an easy balance to strike, and I wasn’t always successful, but it was there as a guiding light. When I lived in South Florida, I remember driving by a Buddhist temple on my way to an assignment and thinking how much I’d like to stop, but being too intimidated—I didn’t know what kind of rituals were required before walking in. When I knew we were relocating to our current town, one of the first searches I did (outside of vegan restaurants) was for Buddhist temples. There is one only 20 minutes from my house and it is a Zen temple, going back to the roots of my first introduction! I started attending some online meditation sessions in late 2021 (online sessions were a covid precaution), but didn’t get into the habit. Then I spent 2022 preoccupied with Gary and his diagnosis. In his absence, and in realizing all the people who are gone from my life now, I realized this may be the perfect time to fully turn my attention to Buddhism. It has been in my life as a thread all along, but now, at mid-life, I could practice it and study it more intentionally. The fact that this house is likely our home base for the rest of our lives (even if we snowbird it to a second home) and it’s only 20 minutes from a Zen Buddhist temple fills me with gladness. I enjoy all the teachers and have been to the Koan Cafes, the Heart of Buddhist teachings, and join their morning and evening meditation 2-4 times a week. I hope to take the precepts at some point when the time is right. It’s also nice to be building a community nearby. At one of the sutra services, the Five Remembrances was chanted and that night I wrote it down and hung it above the altar I have dedicated to my deceased loved ones. I think some may read this and feel sad/pessimistic, but, for me, this is the essence of it all. Recognizing that nothing lasts forever is what makes the current moment so luscious and beautiful—it’s going by quickly. Soak it all up.

The Five Remembrances

(Shakyamuni Buddha, from the Upajjhatthana Sutta)

{I am of the nature to grow old;}

There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health;

There is no way to escape having ill health.

I am of the nature to die;

There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature of change;

There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My deeds are my closest companions.

I am the beneficiary of my deeds;

My deeds are the ground on which I stand.