Category Archives: Choices

Choices, Christmas 2021, Family, friends, gratitude, Hands free, Retreat, self-care, time

Hands Free.

Situation:

This morning the sleet was striking hard and the birds in hiding when, all cozy in my flannel pj’s, my digestive biscuit fell into the fresh cup of tea with a little ‘plop.’ It was a sign of today’s downslide mood: the book I am reading is too long, the tree is losing needles faster than I can vacuum, church was out of the question to stay clear of crowds and the new virus variant. ADaneKnits orders are done. The closets are cleaned of old coats, hats and mittens on their way to people who need them more. A mountain of cookies are bagged. Wrapping: check. Our long-anticipated Christmas Eve gathering was cancelled. Do you see where this is going?

My hands are too free; all wound up for my favorite holiday and grounded. This does not feel right.

It is right, on many levels, of course: hard decisions had to be made — retract and stay well (or meet outside ’round the solo stove) — so we could gather together the 24th with family, healthy for the holiday. But all this time alone is a dangerous slope for this type-A.

I want to spread joy, eggnog, body hugs SO MUCH. I want to see you. Instead, I watch Single All The Way on Netflix not once, but twice.

Yesterday it occurred to me that while I intended to be on holiday from writing, I could set the twinkle lights on ‘blink’ mode, clear my desk of wrapping paper, and sink into some more words. Unheard of in Christmas seasons past.

Isn’t time what I long for when ordinarily the season is a race to the finish?

I look at my hands that never stop and remind them that rest is good for all of me. No need to do anything but settle into the moment, be grateful for free. So this Sunday before Christmas, instead of bells and hymns, brunch and mimosas, crowding into shops, I will take a long walk. Later, I might even string lights around all the beds and take a long bath.

Because, you know, nothing but time is ok.

Thanks for reading, grateful for you, stay well.

Merry Christmas.

A.

Yes, this cup.

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Choices, Give + Receive, Public Health

Everyone needs you.

I am having a lot of conversations with friends and colleagues about ‘getting back’ to what some are calling the normal state of affairs before March, 2020; a “pre-pandemic-ness.” Others fervently argue we now live in a completely changed world that cannot be brought back — broken social systems, transportation, public spaces, relationships to strangers, since the virus and lockdown. No question that contents have shifted. But one based on hope and one based on fear is not the answer.

I think neither is absolute. Fact is we need each other to navigate out of the middle.

After my cancer in 2017 and the subsequent decade of tests and scans and oncology visits ahead of me, I had to choose something besides fear. Lying awake, wondering if my life was balanced by days instead of years, I also realized I had been invited to live. So each and every morning that I awake up, I review what I can do for myself and the world around me. Here are some.

Give: in this broken and beautiful world I am here and so many are living less privileged lives than me. I can affect them in simple ways — make a sandwich, put it in your pocket or bag and when you see a homeless person, hand it to them and wish them a good day. Call a friend you haven’t seen or talked to since 2020. Stand in the rain with an umbrella. Offer it.

Generate: give to places that make you happy: church, town bench fund, beach clean up fund, immigrant families in need of clothes. Any amount. They need to keep the heat on, put boots on the ground, save others. Be the example. Tell others.

Go: to your favorite places, masked, sanitized, and fill them with your presence. So many community spaces lie empty or filled with so few people they despair for their future. Do you like to sit in a church and think? Do you love the library? How about that family-run taco truck? Be the hybrid, safe and present. Religion is just one piece of what the space in a church has to offer. Go find the peace in a park. Eat tacos that allow that family to eat.

Gush: over anything anybody is doing to cope. We made it. Celebrate the vast achievement. Accept the beautiful and broken world. Watch a bird on the wire overhead. Contemplate a red leaf. Walk the stairs and feel your heart beat hard. Put your mask on when required. Laugh a little at how good we are at this now.

Adopt a new state of consciousness that complies with the realities of public health. Public health and safety is a real thing now. While it isn’t the same, every time I leave the house, to remember to pack a mask and sanitizing wipes, sit six feet apart for music, theater, dance, all the beauty and music in the world is trying to happen for us. Give it your love. Can you imagine if it did not come back?

Take care of your community. Walk around. Sit in a pew. Drink coffee on a bench. Emerge safely.

Everyone needs you. I need you.

Strafford, Vermont
A walk in the woods.

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Choices, Diet, Dieting, fat girl, Women

Taking Steps.

It takes me exactly 3,500 steps, according to my FitBit, to walk over and down the hill to the french bakery, Rosallini’s, that in my opinion pulls the best coffee between Ballard and Green Lake. The walk puts a hefty dent in my hard-won 10,000 daily steps. However, I only indulge in a pastry there about once a week. When I order my lattes I breathe in the butter-filled air, gaze into the pastry cases, and plot out the next treat. This appreciation-not-deprivation makes the equation of exercise and calories work for me.

This morning, as I tried to make my hot coffee match the length of the New York Times, two women sidled up to the bar next to me, deeply engaged in conversation. I began to hear “ten pounds” and “diet” and “no carbs.” They were talking over each other, competing pounds lost and gained. Do women really talk like this anymore to each other?

I had just finished reading my health writer idol Jane Brody’s article, For Real Weight Control, published January 28th, that addressed just this issue of extreme dieting.  She supported the idea — with data and fact and personal experience — that we have to change habits to control our weight, not take away eating. The deprivation vs. moderation argument that has become personal to me.

When you have lost as many bits and pieces as I have including a length of colon, time is precious and so is my food. It matters what I eat and how I eat and silver lining time; this has become a lesson for me. I feel better if I eat thoughtfully and every four hours. Generally, my portions are small plate. I still have two pieces or more of chocolate at tea time. There is no food martyrdom, just a consideration that what goes in has to be good for this battered flesh and bone, aging despite all the diets in the universe. Once a fat girl who hated her body, I now am grateful it is carrying me into the next decade.

It was a close call at the bakery this morning — whether I was going to lean over and let fly some unfiltered and unsolicited opinions and offer this link — or whether I was going to sit this one out. Super close when I swiveled, put down my paper and saw two beautiful, thin women were having this conversation. And it is January, ladies — not the month to punish ourselves.

I won’t pounce on you at the bakery; I hope you will click on and read the article linked above. But I will send you healing vibes as I eat my vanilla bean eclair in a few days with a creamy, steaming 12 oz latte.

Get informed. Love the body you live in. Take a walk with that friend who is obsessed with dieting. Hug them.

Then enjoy yourself.img_4917

Painting by Todd Young, owned by Beth Slattery

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Choices, Knitting, Read, writing

Essentials.

What I am reading: The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison —  The Tao of Raven: An Alaska  Native Memoir, Ernestine Hayes —  Dancing Bears, Witold Szablowski.

What I just finished : The School of Essential Ingredients, Erica Bauermeister — Devotions, Mary Oliver — Songs of Willow Frost, Jamie Ford.

What I am knitting: A vest out of maize-colored Rowan Felted Tweed. A Churchmouse Yarn cowl pattern, wildly adapted to what I had in my yarn bag. An orchid-colored Alexandra’s Airplane scarf out of Rowan Kid Silk Haze and beaded with pink iridescent micro-beads.

What I am writing: Draft #20 of a personal essay piece, about to be submitted.

You get the picture: books, yarn, needles, paper. Last weekend my cousin and I went to an estate sale, early in the morning while the dew was still shivering on the cherry blossoms. We parked by a stone archway and stepped into a long room anchored by a walk-in fireplace, fully ablaze. I wandered this old farmhouse, stripped bare and crackling with story. When I returned to the front room the owner was saying “It just got away from us.” I fingered a chipped bowl full of scissors. My heart broke around the edges.

There is letting go and there is not keeping up. I want to be the former, smart and brave and realistic when the time comes. Recently the time has come for certain things: clothes I will never wear, shoes I cannot walk in anymore. And books. And furniture.

I sense I am in a race with myself, a new look at the future —  to not be caught short of sense and burdened by stuff. Last year’s health scares just simply brought home that  there is not an endless stretch ahead. So what do I really need each day?

Books, yarn, needles, paper works every corner of my brain, now that I have it back inside my head. Everything is portable and can be pulled from the same bag. Perhaps a toothbrush would be good.

And the people that love me, that are on this journey with me? I will have toothbrushes for all of you, too.

Ten months and counting from that double-whammy last year. I am learning to pack a bag of the essential ingredients and let the rest go.

 

Bainbridge Island, March 18th, 2018 Camelia

Bainbridge Island, March 18, 2018. Camellia blossom: essential spring.

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Choices, ovarian cancer, Suzanne Wedel, Suzanne Wedel XOXOUT

My body, My friend.

Some people might place flowers to honor a friend’s death. I will lie my body down.

Three hundred and sixty five days ago my friend Dr. Suzanne Wedel died from ovarian cancer. Her daughter called to tell me while I was standing on an empty beach, watching the gulls hover over iced waves. I was willing time to stand still. Three hundred and sixty five days later, I honor Suzanne with a surgery date, making good on a promise I made to her. Doing all I can so history does not repeat itself.

My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I was twenty-one years old and she was forty-seven. We coped. We fought. We learned. We lost. That has always been the nature of ovarian cancer, no different in 1982 or 2017 — once diagnosed, a woman’s risk of dying is exponentially higher than any other female cancer. It hides, divides and grows unseen. Once ovarian cancer is diagnosed, you are past the easy stage. Period.

I trusted medical advances and advice for the last thirty years: yearly CA125 blood test, trans-vaginal ultrasounds, twice-yearly pelvics. Until Suzanne. Amazing physician, mother and friend with no familial history of ovarian cancer. Then — a pain in her shoulder. Tight waistband. After three years of every cutting edge surgery and treatment, she was gone.

Her illness highlighted that there is no magic wand no matter who you are: ovarian cancer, without an early detection test, is deadly. Her genetics were negative, but there I was sitting next to her on her couch with personal family history of this cancer. The gig was up. She made me promise; promise to remove my ovaries and fallopian tubes, SOON. She very plainly noted, as Suzanne could do so well, that I was foolish to play roulette with my body and my history.

What you should know: Today, oncologists advise if there is any family history, regardless of genetics, fallopian tubes and ovaries should be removed after bearing the last child. That they now believe ovarian cancer originates in the fallopian tubes.  That waiting, until one is fifty-eight years old with a family history, no matter how informed you think you are, is stupid.

I have been given a clean bill of health and await my genetic map. Regardless, on April 20, 2017 I will go spend the day with an incredible surgeon, AK Goodman, at Mass General Hospital. I will have mourned my fertility, my hormones and my skin appropriately. I will have loose pretty pajamas and friends waiting for me at home. I will honor my friend and her family and what we know so far. And if we are supremely fortunate, the Suzanne XOXOUT Fund will expedite an early detection test so my children and their children can grow old with less risk.

Better than flowers. I can now stand on the beach and tell her she made a difference. In so many ways, but especially to me. But she knows that.

XOX back at you, Suzanne.

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March 30, 2017 Bainbridge Island Ferry, sunrise

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#crushtour, Begin anew, Choices, Golf Fights Cancer, Kindness, Suzanne Wedel XOXOUT

Cowgirl boots. Attitude. Onwards.

Forget gentile resolutions. This is the day I am kicking stuff to the curb. There’s that word again. Time for my red pointy cowgirl boots and a big attitude.

Going:

People who can’t be fair or open minded about politics or gluten or sexual preferences.  Anger, prejudice, hatred is life-sucking, mean and tiring. If we were all the same life would be a big snore. I love you all. Thank you for loving me.

Sugar: Used to be just salt. Now I am going to scrutinize sugar. Turns out that is a sneaky unhealthy additive, too. Still researching the chocolate.

Bad humor: From me or others. A new barista has ruined my morning ritual with unfriendliness. I am killing her with kindness. We had enough animosity in the elections. Try the opposite effect.

Ignorance:  Fact. The divide will be greater under the next President. My cousin Nicole, on seeing a homeless family this week, asked them what they needed, drove to the store, purchased the items, and returned to place them at their feet. I intend to practice kindness with double intensity, especially to strangers. Do it more. Thank you, Nicole.

Wasted time: My dog is getting old. My 50’s winding down. I want to measure 2017 with all the good times. We have to make that happen for ourselves. I wasted a huge portion of 2016 addicted to the news. And we know how reliable that was — don’t cheat and waste time on people or places that do not make your heart soar.

Cancer. I may need help with this one, it is heavy. My son’s very best BFF is battling Gliobastoma. Ovarian cancer took a friend in March. Let’s #CRUSHTOUR every single day: Help crush cancer with your heart, feet, hands and your wallet. Suzanne Wedel XOXOUT Fund, Golf Fights Cancer, wherever people are putting science and money into understanding how to crush cancer they need you. Please. Your kick will make a difference.

And finally:

Looking down has got to stop. Look up. We are part of a vast, complicated, beautiful world. Be part of it. Look where staying in our own little reality got us in 2016. Open yourself to everything and everyone.

While Olive snoozes off her breakfast and the birds kick  seed into the air I write this short list. Write one of your own now. Let’s make a mountain on the curb. Let’s start something good tonight, like a New Year.

Kick hard today. The very best news about tomorrow, January 1st, 2017, is that the crazy horrible that was 2016 is out with the trash.

I’m taking the best bits forward with some serious attitude.

Adios, 2016.

Let us step outside for a moment
As the sun breaks through clouds
And shines on wet new fallen snow,
And breathe the new air.
So much has died that had to die this year.

2016

May Sarton, New Year Poem, first stanza.

Bainbridge Island, November 2016.

 

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Changes, Choices, Friendship, Women

What We Need We Do Not Know.

 

What we need we do not know but find on the street corners, women in soft t-shirts walking dogs, mothers, the milk, just strangers who pause to savor that day of freedom November 8 the talk of children and leaves not small circles pressed deep with pens and pencils or choices all the ones we have made over and over for everyone but ourselves for today is our day.

What we need we do not know November 9 we push our fingers frantically, beating against our streaming words and screaming soundless fury, scrolling and scrolling and hoping the next line will make us better, so many words to find one answer the rainbow bleeds to white at the unfathomable red fury.

What we need we do not know but find anyways when we push off the noise, once the rain falls relentless and the paper stays unopened we float curled on the couch seek with coffee and friends anchor at our kitchen tables the tired in our bones rising, the tired that comes just before the fight and the starting gun.

What we need we do not know but it’s been buried deep and anyways will take four years to recognize, to age into the imperfect terroir clinging to our tongues staining our breath the taste of loss and resurrection of sweetbitterlove.

What we need we do not know but we discover in a humble safety pin. We push the sharp end through our ragged skins, catch the torn edges, secure the clasp. Begin in pain anyways bleeding and mending,my skin fusing with your skin my children scarring together with your children my vote cast with your vote. Again.

What we need we do not know until we find ourselves at the corner with the women holding each other, laughing at the joy of ourselves.

Alexandra Dane, November 11, 2016

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Choices, Hillary Clinton, Vote

Bite Me.

Tuesday, September 27 was my birthday. The day after more than 80 million people tuned in for the first presidential debate of 2016, a night that changed the decorum of politics forever. You can go on Facebook, Twitter, TV or NPR and listen to the debrief. Or not pay attention. Your choice.

I am going to talk about cookies.

At my daughter’s engagement party Saturday night we were served some amazing cookies.  Cut, styled and frosted imaginatively and deliciously. When was the last time you grabbed three cookies? I could not refrain or restrain. I ate a silver-leafed champagne bottle, a blushing bride and a handsome groom. Every bite divine.

Restraint is overrated at my age.

I wore a bubblegum pink dress with bell sleeves and a swingy hem. I had on flats and danced until two in the morning. I stuck to Bud Light. I didn’t care what I looked like or that I didn’t drink the Tequila punch. But when I walked in and saw those platters of cookies?

“Bite me,” they called. And I ate as many as I could.

And this election year I feel strongly about my candidate. I am making a choice to vote for Hillary Clinton and I don’t care if it is the same as your vote. America, we can either choose or snooze every four years. Which will you do this November?

Because this matters. 

I’m choosing. I’m voting. I’m talking. I’m biting into this, people.

Do it. This is not the time for restraint.

#Imwithher

She doesn’t bake, thank goodness. She needs to run the country instead.

Besides, I know where to get the best ones in town.

 

 

 

 

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