Today, Like Every Other Day

Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty
and frightened.
Dont open the door
to the study
and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love
be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the ground.

- Rumi
Transalted by Coleman Barks


It was early that morning when the thunder cracked, the walls shook and the lightening danced atop my house like an ominous Tibetan deity who's pleasure might be to crush sculls underfoot. Texas hill country thuderstorms have a certain appeal. I ran down the hall and jumped into into bed with Eliot, my twenty three year old son. He opened his eyes, smiled and rolled over to go back to sleep. I laid there remembering many mornings when he was little and scared, how he would climb into my big bed, throw his arms around me and fall back to sleep, his hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden tangle. That was in the old house, the one he grew up in, the one with the crazy neighbor we called "Ninja Pete", a self styled vigilante who believed that we were international drug dealers who lowered the property value in the neighborhood. With his surveillance cameras pointed at my bedroom, nija outfits, a sawed off shotgun, multiple lawsuits and Clint Eastwood type threats, this man could definitely be scarey. I would say that Ninja Pete trumped most thunderstorms.

I find a strange comfort in thunderstorms. I spent every summer of my childhood waiting for the inevitable thunderstorm. I would diligently take the pulse of the storm by counting the moments between thunder and lightening, secretly wishing for the deafening moment when flash and the crack occur simultaneously. There is something about the nearness of a storm, something alive and intensely primitive that makes you want to huddle and share that nearness with another, not so much out of fear but rather delight. It is something to take pleasure it, as my friend Roger Housden would say. That morning as I grabbed the down pillow off my bed and ran down the hall to promised land of my sons bedroom, I know it wasnt the fear of the storm that was driving me. It was the fear of the storm ahead in my life, the battle with breast cancer.
Cancer trumps Ninja Pete and thunderstorms.

The storm brought the Texas heat down a few notches that day. By the afternoon, Eliot suggested that we go for a drive out into the hill country with Jim, Eliot's dad, to a place the Native Americans considers sacred, Enchanted Rock. It is a unique geological formation, a pink granite mountain range broken by the techtonic shifting of the Pan-Gaia, and a beautiful place to watch the sunset. We drove and drove through the hill country, through little towns and open fields, peach orchards and vineyards, grazing cattle, goats, horses and the rich greeness of the wetted soil. Finally we descended into the valley where the granite rises out of the ground like a great mound, or a large breast. We walked to the base of the rock and looked up the sheer incline. It was the hottest time of the day. There was no breeze. I was drenched in sweat and we hadnt even begun the ascent. I looked up, still recovering from the surgery, weak and exhausted, unable to imagine the stamina needed to climb to the top. Several years ago I could have briskly ascended without a second thought. I felt old and sick. I felt like giving up before I even started. But it was part of our thinking about honoring Fathers Day and part of Eliot's thinking about what heals.

Jim was very gentle. "Don't push yourself, dontt feel you have to do this. But see if you can make it to that rock." The rock was only about 250 feet away but about a 35 degree incline. I didnt think I could do it. I looked up. The summit was still far off. I eyed another rock, a lesser destination. I made my way to that rock. I thought to myself, I can make it to the top by just taking it one step at a time. I said to Jim and Eliot,"This is the lesson: to be with each step, to be present and not overwhelmed by what seems to be daunting. And above all not to give up." As the sweat poured down my face, a strong breeze that picked up and cooled me. The hawks overhead, their wings lifted by the thermals, were gliding gracefully on the air currents. My wings had been lifted also. I reached the summit. It was beautiful . The morning rains had gathered into silver reflecting pools in the granite. The horizon spread out below us. Eliot rediscovered the joy of a Nikon D 70 and clicked away like the papparazi.

Finally it was time to return. The sheerness of the descent gives many people vertigo. It is like walking down from the nipple of a giant breast, or walking about on the tiny planet of the Little Prince. I felt as if I might fall off the edge. But then I reminded myself, the lesson from the ascent, "to be with each step, to be present and not overwlemed by what seems to be daunting. And above all not to give up"

The alchemy of mindfulness trumps cancer.