Olive, August afternoon 2015

I looked over at Olive this afternoon and all but lay down on the floor. The ‘dog days of August’ are here, the slow, humid torpor of air and heat and cicadas. Oh, to nap. But I am running out of time to finish the stack of books I challenged myself to read this August. The excuse to rise early, read late, haunt the library and demand titles from everyone I meet in June and July.

Yes, August is Reading Marathon Month.

I should be writing. There are two projects burning a hole through my work table. But I like to use August to jump-start my new year of work, to hit the ‘refresh’ button, to sing some new cadences into my head. My personal back-to-school shopping list is eclectic. In the New England stun of heat and moisture, I turn the limp pages and live elsewhere in the words. I fully believe this makes me a better writer. And person.

Wait for it. You want the list. Ok. But you have to promise me you will respond in the ‘comment’ area with some of your reading favorites this summer. Anything. Because while I thought I would publish this blog when the stack was gone, I am being a little sneaky: I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours. Predicted to hit high 80’s next week and I still have a few more days to add to the pile.

Alexandra Dane’s August Reads

The Nightingale – Kristen Hannah

The Backs of Small Children — Lidia Yuknovitch

A God in Ruins — Kate Atkinson

Tinkers — Paul Harding

Euphoria — Lily King

Dead Wake — Erik Larsen

Our Souls at Night — Kent Haruf

Blood on Snow — Jo Nesbo

Blender Girl Smoothies — Tess Masters

A Dream of Summer, Poems for the Sensuous Season

Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Storyteller — Jodi Picoult

The Boys in The Boat — Daniel James Brown (Still unread)

A little fiction, non-fiction, poetry, mystery, food, history and current events. The best. I am grateful for the freedom to plunge.

Where did the pages take you this summer?

Warning: This blog has breasts.

A month ago, while in Seattle, I discovered that a skin tag to the right of my breastbone and on the breast surface had developed into a palpable, skittish lump. I immediately called my gynecologist’s office, and spoke with the nurse on call.

“It looks and feels like a subcutaneous cyst,” I began, “I can lift it, and I see something when I squeeze it.” I have had two removed from my back in the last year, leaving jagged, deep scars. Hence the know-it-all language.

“Stop squeezing it,” she said calmly over the 3,000 miles,”I can get you into the Breast Center — no wait, they don’t have any appointments — how about a doctor — no wait everyone is on vacation — ok the physicians assistant can see you in two weeks.”

Hmmmm. No crisis management available here.

I hung up and went to Green Lake to walk it off.  I envisioned all the worst scenarios. You know what I was thinking, we are all no-degree of separation from this. I do not have genes in my favor. But a curious thing happened on my second lap: I realized I had no control of the organics of this lump. But I had control of my response, my well-being, and my sanity. I jogged a little. I sat on the grass. I took deep breaths.

Never good at following directions, having squeezed the bump fifty times every day, it was difficult to see the problem from the black, blue and yellow breast tissue that covered most of my left breast when I left for Boston two weeks later. Within twelve hours of landing I was on a scale. What? Someone tell me why appointments about breasts begin on a scale, like this isn’t hard enough. What good is that information? And wearing a fetching, faded, open-to-the-front gown, shivering in the frigid AC, perched on a crinkly paper-laid table. After telling the story of the Lump to the intake nurse, I waited alone in the icebox with only breast diagrams to read for twenty minutes. Anxiety nicely elevated, I heard the swish of my chart being pulled, and the physician’s assistant pushed through the door. I then had to repeat the story all over again.

Ok, I reasoned to myself, she wants to hear it from me. But why did I tell the first nurse all the same information? Didn’t anyone have anything else to do around here? I warned her about the bruised tissue — “The color? All my doing” —  before she examined me.  She raised her eyebrows. After the exam, she confirmed the Lump, and the cyst idea. She suggested a dermatologist.

‘But it’s in my breast tissue, shouldn’t I see a breast person?” I asked. Pardon me for vanity. I was going for breast expert AND plastic surgeon if I had to have a knife there.

“Sure,” she conferred, ‘we’ll fax the information over to the breast center, then they will call you in a few days and give you an appointment.”

Well, if there is one thing I have learned, be your own advocate. I left with the phone number and called three minutes later from the car.

After a long wrangle with ‘their new computer system,’ I believed I had an appointment. “I think I have released the time for you,'” the frazzled voice at the Breast Center said. Another week wait. Meanwhile I really tried to stop touching it and checking on the size. Really I did.

Four weeks from the first phone call, I arrived at The Breast Center in Danvers at 12:45 for my 1:00 appointment. Honestly, I sweated the entire way there, not for the obvious reasons — my mind would not stay on the mat — there had been no confirmation call, and there probably wasn’t an appointment, and I’d be waiting another three weeks. Then I gripped the wheel and said ‘Lordy, you have no control over THAT either. Just get to the stupid appointment without an accident.”

Every intake desk was empty but one (lunch break) and the famous new computer system could not find the code for my health care provider and there was no one to ask in the office. After much tapping and apologizing, the consent form finally spit out of the printer twenty-five minutes later and I signed my name.

At 1:30 I was escorted to a room by a suspiciously un-medical looking young lady, then had to recite all my medical history and family medical history while she searched for the right places to click on the large monitor above the keyboard. “New system?” I said conversationally. She never had eye contact, concentrating so hard on the keys.

She then took my blood pressure, snapping the cuff around my arm and dashing back to her computer while it wheezed.

“Did you have coffee this morning? Your blood pressure numbers are a little high.”

“Ummm, yes? a triple espresso?” But the bubble over my head read: “I betcha this number would be high anyways at this point.”

At 1:45, I wrestled my bad shoulder into a teal, open-to-the-front gown, obviously sewn for women with matchstick arms. And waited another thirty minutes. This time, prepared, I ignored the large wall of breast diagram posters labeled ‘benign’ and ‘malignant (take my blood pressure now and you might have to admit me) and read my New York Times.

At 2:30, the physician assistant arrived. I then had to repeat ALL the same information, while she figured out how to enter it into yet another series of files. “Having fun with your new computer system? I’m very familiar with it by now.” I am going to guess I was coming off rude.

I cannot even begin to tell you what I was thinking, even though she was a lovely woman. Is this process secretly testing for Alzheimer’s? Are they comparing answers from Round #1 (How often do you drink? Do you take drugs? Is your home safe?) to see if I remember to answer the same way? Who would tell the truth about drugs anyways? I silently chastised myself for not taking this entirely more seriously, but come on, they weren’t taking my sanity seriously. I had been in the building almost two hours.

Yes, this is a subcutaneous cyst. I learned a malignant lump would cling to the breast wall, not float under my fingers. The breast tissue would pull, or dimple, where the lump situated. And no, I am not supposed to rub, squeeze or push on this cyst (becomes larger, hurts more). Follow up in three months, with an ultrasound and removal if still there.

I don’t like these dress rehearsals. I have been by the side of too many friends that went through the real deal. But stepping a little outside myself, I watched a really dysfunctional, slow and expensive system sort-of deal with what could have been much more dire. I walked through the sliding doors to the parking lot grateful I was young enough, and aggressive enough and calm enough to have made it through.

I inhaled deeply when I got to the car.

Next time? I will hope there isn’t one. But I will probably be more pushy, and more demanding.

People, it’s the only way.

Last weekend I had the privilege of being invited to Grand Lake Stream, Maine, pop. 150, to a friend’s camp at the end of a ten-mile lake. There is not another camp in sight on any horizon. If that wasn’t wonderful enough, I opted out of water sports and had the camp to myself one afternoon. Olive was so tuckered out from scampering up and down the pine needle paths and wading for frogs that as soon as the boat pulled away and I sat down with my book, she fell completely asleep at my feet.

Funny thing. Silence.

Initially, I felt suspended, and maybe a slight bit of tension. My hands were idle. I had absolutely no cell service, my phone off and on my bunk. Nothing moved. There were a few birds busy in the tall pine trees, I sensed as much as heard the folding sound of the lake touching the shore. But mostly — nothing. For a split second I was a little worried. I sat back in my deep adirondack chair and watched the still water. I’m alone in the middle of nowhere, after all. But in a few heartbeats or two, my body let go. My hands rested on the smooth wood. Sun shadows broke over me.

I stopped reading.

I don’t actually remember when I last heard nothing. My writing retreat in Seattle has been under siege with a construction project next door going on a year (earplugs). My town life is full of cars, trucks, dog barking and neighbor improvement projects (fan/air conditioner). My garden fountain spews water 24-7. The refrigerator hums. The washing machine thumps. Car doors slam. My phone buzzes or dings all day long.

What I immediately recognized was how my brain began to expand in the quiet. All the problems that have cluttered up my thinking — wresting over title words, passages that have gotten stale, blog ideas — began leisurely rolling through my head, uninvited. I had nowhere to go, I could just sit there and think, inhaling the smell of bark and dusty pine. In and out. In and out.

Then a word became the answer. Then one had to go. Of course that chapter really doesn’t work.

I never moved, just thought about whatever popped into my head.

Recently I applied to a writing residency in Washington State, to a women’s writing center called Hedgebrook.  Seven women are chosen for seven cabins over a given period of time, to write and share ideas. All meals and housekeeping are provided. If accepted, you have to surrender to your project during the day in silence. Lunch is delivered to the door of your cabin. Dinner is communal.

I hadn’t actually understood how rich that could be until the afternoon began to deepen. Olive rolled over, and the sun lowered slowly through the tips of the trees. I had no sense of how much time had passed. I had written five pages in my notebook — good pages — and I was mentally refreshed in a way no workshop or hour at the computer has ever provided. I wanted to stay for a month in my chair and dream.

I reluctantly clued into the drone of the engine, the laughing shouts from the water skiing boaters. Olive jumped down to chase a small wood mouse to the water’s edge. While the peace and quiet had ended, I was relaxed. Ready for kitchen work and a last swim and good company. I tucked my notebook into my bag, hoping I was tucking some of that quiet in, too.

Moments like this are not lost on me these days: I am determined to find another quiet space, or be invited to Hedgebrook some day, or just remember to rest my hands and let my thinking go where it may. An important and lasting lesson amongst the pine. Solitude is good for me. Thank you friends.

Tony’s Coffee House, Fairhaven, WA

Imagine how happy I was to see this sign. For one thing, I am always striving for balance — how much time to exercise, read, write, see friends, spend time with my family. I am determined, as most of you know, to write this manuscript, treat the work seriously; adhering to hours set aside each day, responsibilities and benefits. This usually falls apart back in Boston when I want to do everything BUT stay inside and write or research. Especially when Olive puts a small paw on my knee, indicating it’s time for her.

I want cookies in both hands. Now, that lends to an extra roll around the middle, but a sense of pleasure and reward no matter what — double dessert, double espresso, double the treat. I thrive with the work, the research, the failures, the kudos. In actuality, how to hold everything I love to do in just two hands?

Last weekend I felt doubly blessed. At the Chuckanut Writer’s Conference I had the option of Erik Larson in one room, Stephanie Kallos in another, Elizabeth George speeding down the hallway in her red Converse sneakers. Carol Cassella smiling at absolutely everyone. A few new authors I had the pleasure to listen to and question.

The conference was a cookie in each hand:  Two days with my hands full of notes, paper, pens, my head full of great ideas, an interesting person at every turn. Wait, that’s three.

I needed two more hands.

I can get happily fat on that.

Yellow Beets, Ballard Farmer’s Market, June 2015

I thought things slowed down during the hot summer months, but this week the news has been heating up: SCOTUS decides on gay marriage rights, Obama works on his bucket list, ISIS puts out more scary video, the Confederate flag goes down. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death, and in Yulin, so have the dogs. In my house, the princess puppy has medical issues that cost a small tuition. So here we are, June, the third day of summer, going gangbusters on cultural contradictions and moral debates.

Me? I am trying to write a 250-word In Medias Res for a workshop and a book proposal for a writer’s conference on Friday, reboot my manuscript writing now that I have my other shoulder moving again. I seem to be rushing, worrying, not getting sleep. The everyday has been stressful, between morning espresso and afternoon tea, deadlines and dinner. Flipping open my iPad or MacBook all day and night, or my cellphone and  the newspaper to skim the craziness. I send emails from bed, start the day reading texts. This does not feel so healthy.

A great Facebook post popped up today, beginning,

“Note to Self:

None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought”. 

Pause. Whoa. And repost. How do we put ourselves first, the bad news on the back burner, the cellphone in the kitchen drawer? The post ends,

“Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.”

Today I took a moment to browse a neighborhood second-hand shop and found a small buddha necklace. In a few minutes, I’m going to step away from my computer and stretch, then walk for another coffee. I’m going to say ‘hello’ to everyone I pass. Because then there’s that: We are all together walking this earth, despite our differences, we are all important. Though I’m not going to visit Yulin anytime soon.

What are you going to do for yourself today?

Jake creates a work of art. The Atomic Cafe, Marblehead, MA.

There are lots of reasons, especially after reading my twitter feed, or tapping into the New York Times banners on my cell phone, or opening the morning paper, to feel downright depressed.

The all-over news is so alarming; the Charleston shootings so heartbreaking, the status of refugees throughout the world so dire, the drought in California and many other states so urgent. And closer to home, we have a new neighbor who is threatening the peace and camaraderie that our little street has nourished and cherished for decades. My pup had to have a liver biopsy this week. To name just a few reasons to feel down.

But I am full of hope, despite. I call it my ‘small plate’ philosophy this summer, appreciating what is in front of me: My roses survived icicle decapitation beyond all expectations. I sit back and watch one daughter discover photography while she is briefly home this summer, yet again demonstrating what a talented artist she is, this time through the lens. My son has a successful new job. My eldest has managed not just one, but two nights visiting around a challenging travel schedule. I discovered squid-in-ink with old friends. There is a new barista at The Atomic Cafe with a twinkle in his eye and incredible craft. I have had long walks with girlfriends, sunset boat rides, have tasted amazing homemade blackberry mead. All this in June alone.

This isn’t the summer of long vacationing, per se, but the summer of small plates, small moments with those that count. The traffic goes pell mell, the world spins, the month is ending. But there have been so many small highlights.

I have taken the time to sit with my pup and watched the cardinals feed at dawn. Feeling nourished, even when I feel overwhelmed by the tasks ahead, the greater size and pulse of the world.

Tomorrow, I head back to Seattle to continue my summer of work and attend The Chuckanut Writer’s Conference as well as refresh my writing with the astute Nick O’Connell. Pull more of the manuscript project together. Write with friends. Cook with friends. Look at the lake. Stick to my philosophy.

Call me optimistic and Little Miss Sunshine, but stand still and grab a little bit of what is happening around you.

I discover I don’t need a long holiday. Just to remember to think small. And let that feed me.

Andrew’s homemade Blackberry Mead Cosmos.

This week I am tackling one of several spaces that have become storage — well maybe a graveyard — of memorabilia. I had no problem with tossing knitting projects that I will never attempt. I donated the dozens of unopened notebooks. There was no question the fifteen sets of single sheets, from decades of bunkbeds, would go to the Salem Mission. Cookbooks I haven’t cracked open for ten years — OUT. But after the garage and recycle bins filled, I was staring at paper. So much paper. Precious paper.

There is a lot of hype around Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. So as I opened the boxes, some eighty, ninety and even one hundred years old, I tried to channel her words.

“Just throw them away,” she orders.

But enter the conflict: She also consuls, “Keep the things that spark joy.”

Now what?

One box, marked ‘mementos,’ has childhood letters and cards my mother, deceased for thirty years, wrote her parents. Like this one penciled on crumbling, musty notepaper:

Alexandra Hammer, May 23rd, 1943

She married twelve years later, into a staunch German family where headcheese was the featured dish on the Christmas sideboard. This box brings me joy. My grandfather’s spindly, carefully penciled notation on the envelope notes, “Poems written by Alexandra with no help except for spelling during a practice air raid.”

I sit back on my heels, the contents of the box spread around me and this pile of paper sparks even more than joy. I close my eyes and see this little girl in pigtails, hunkered down next to her father, impeccable in his bowtie, delivering her best blow to the enemy. I remember my grandfather, the loving father who saved her notes so carefully in the rose-patterned box. He, too, recognized the legacy of remembering and holding messages from our past. I smile, knowing what I know, that she grew up just as feisty when the pigtails were cropped, when her marriage ended, when the cancer arrived.

I also found this drawing by my youngest daughter.

EDG, date unknown.

The pencil marks are thick, pressed deeply into the paper. If I had to guess, sketched when she was six or seven years old. But what struck me was the size of her prince compared to her princesses. She was getting  that right fourteen years ago, putting those princes into perspective.  Especially if he is wearing those ridiculous toe shoes.

I will be pulling this out for her wedding. This sparks joy, the thought she will find someone of her own one day, that looks her in the eye, that she deems worthy.

I am practicing the life-changing art of recognizing joy. These boxes of old, especially very old correspondence, travel diaries, love letters, Christmas cards tie me to my past, make real the invisible thread from then to now, from them to me. Make me happy. Make me think. I love a clean set of shelves as much as the next person, but sorry, I have to stack a few boxes there, after I’m done dreaming.

AJ King bakery wall art, Salem, Massachusetts

Just the other day I turned to a friend in CVS and said: “If you are the emergency contact? And the nursing home staff has lost me during the drugstore outing — even with my walker? Just tell them to look for me in the school supplies aisle.”

I still get goosebumps when I see the stack of candy-colored notebooks, the bin of loose pens, the fresh and still slabs of legal pads secreted away on the vinyl shelves under the florescent lighting. Not just in September, any time of year. Perhaps I crave the un-rumpled sheets, the first pure streak of blue ink from a new Bic pen. But perhaps I love the promise, the potential, of all those writing receptors. They whisper to me, something like, “buy me, I will take your words, any of them. Just write.”

Crazy lady in Aisle 3.

Just write should be tattooed on the tender inside of our wrists, all of us that aspire. Rejection, success; in the end, we have to just write. Again. And again. I muddle through the middle, I zig-zag back to my prologue, I write the end with a flourish, then realize I have to just keep writing to get the words even better. I unwrap a new pad, put some more paper in the printer. I have the carbon footprint of a pre-historic dinosaur this year, judging from my recycling.

A few days ago a twitter challenge circulated, “#youmightbeawriter.” I replied: “#youmightbeawriter…when your heart beats faster in the school supply aisle.” I had about thirty new followers in ten minutes.

I am doing what makes my heart beat faster. This writing business is not for everyone. Maybe not for me, anytime soon, in hardback. Somedays I think this has to be the most difficult task ever imagined, with more downsides than up, with never enough time, with constant and harsh criticism the norm. But my fellow workshop writers are slowly getting published, I send out more pieces daily, and the craft of writing lives strong in my fingers.

I spy that new stack of legal pads on my desk. And they are calling.

Just park the walker and write. They will find you.

I know. Another picture of spring’s beautiful bounty. I can’t help myself. Ballard Farmer’s Market, Sunday, May 17, 2015.

It’s official: Olive and I head to Boston tomorrow afternoon between workshops to spend a month with the family. I wish I could say I have the packing thing down but there seems to be a duffle bag  full of clothes that I can’t live without. Plus a roller bag ready with bits and pieces and the laptop. Also, a dog carrier by the door.  Alaska Airlines, here we come.

I spent the day going over some chapters, working in the backyard (no dirt untouched by me wherever I live, ever), and catching up on a huge pile of New York Times pages that have stacked up while I finished my workshops.

Olive and I took a walk around the lake early this morning and I am feeling sentimental. I have deepened friendships and trust with old and new writing friends. Chatted with some amazing authors. Increased my per-day espresso consumption, thank you Allison, at Cafe Vita. This may have been driven by the large dog biscuits passed over the counter, who’s to say. And thanks to this amazing weather, I was able to see the first blooms on my clematis, ‘Piilu.’

See you soon from the other coast. Thank you for reading.

A. Dane

The path to writing a memoir takes unexpected turns. A random prompt occurs and a writer finds memory peeling back to reveal a sudden moment of clarity. Take for instance my memory of milk. Add a workshop on emotional wounds. Dust this with the book, eating heaven, I picked up after hearing the engaging Jennie Shortridge at The Seattle University Search for Meaning Book Festival.

And there is another story in me:

When I was young, the age when I didn’t know distrust, to wonder what was happening, I went to the pediatrician with my mother. I recall the cold crackling paper on the table, sitting very still while the adult words were lobbed over my head.

“Milk.” “Too much.” “Fat.” “Powdered skim.” “Watch.”

Wait.

Fat?

What was that?

I was seven years old at the most. The table and my family were the center of my universe. Smooth, dairy-fresh milk was my favorite snack. Watch what?

I never was in charge of my body again. Fat was. Other people’s opinions were; french fries were removed from my plate, creamy whole milk banned, a small glass of powdered milk, blue and thin, at my place at the table each night. I learned to sneak snacks, spoon peanut butter from the jar while my mother was on the phone, hide cookies in my pockets. Eat more, faster, harder, alone, hide.

And this translated into a disassociation from my body. I approached the dining table for the next fifty years deciding what I would not eat instead of what I wanted to eat, or needed to eat. If my body was flawed, I had to control it like others before me.

This is not an unusual story for a woman born in the late 1950’s, the era of Twiggy, my mother eating cottage cheese and celery for a week to ‘diet,’ my grandmother patting my belly and exclaiming “what’s this!”

I’m not saying anything new. But I could DO something new when my first daughter was born in 1987. I banned the word ‘fat’ from my household, sat everyone down and declared this law. I did have control over the next important little girl. I intended that food, preparation, and love be the catalyst to gather together at the table.

This is not an essay on success, or failure, or blame. Our culture for thinness is strong and poisonous. My daughters navigated well, considering, and I am proud of them. I still ban the word.

I err towards information and power. A young woman I admire blogs to empower women around food issues. Her tag line reads:

“Be Happy. Be Bright. Be You.”

Pieces of my story slip through me and onto the page and I think about forgiveness and distortion and dis-ease with the blood and bones a creator gave me and I am both angry and sad. Can I undo what was done? Not really. But somehow acknowledging this dysfunctional relationship gave it a lot less power. Makes me more bright. More me.

I ate the fortune cookie after my meal last night. Memory is a funny thing. I love strawberries, too.

Word count: 525