seeking comfort | pull up a chair

September 20, 2024

the equinox of scan time: equal parts shadow and light

you start to wonder. which is another name for worry. for most of the last five months, i’ve worked at pushing it off to the edge of the frame. to keep it out of my focus. but october is coming. and with it, the next scan. the next clear-eyed peek into my insides, into my lungs, to see if anything’s lurking that oughtn’t be.

i’ve mused about the saintly side of scan time. how it’s akin to memento mori, the ancient and holy practice of remembering our death so that we maximally live our one swift shot at this astonishing life.

but the other side of scan time is the deeply human side. the wake-me-up-in-the-night, the try-not-to-worry-that-the-pain-in-my-ribs-is-anything-scary side.

i feel it rumbling around the edges. the what-ifs i bat down as if a pesky mosquito that won’t leave me alone. i try not to tumble down the shadowy mole hole of imagining a call to my boys, letting them know i need another round of surgery. i try to quash the dialogue that runs through my head, my doctor’s voice telling me there’s something in the scan that looks worrisome, that needs more poking around. i try not to let cancer be the ice to my spine.

i try not to cry.

but sometimes i get scared.

i am, always, bumpily, raggedly, very much human.

i’m still new to the tidal ebb and flow of scan time. and the scan now rising on the horizon’s edge is only my third since surgery, since they took out a chunk of my lung, since they found an uncommon cancer that sometimes decides to shuffle around in the lungs, settle in where it wasn’t before. what i’m finding here in the precinct of scan time is that when i near the one-month-to-go mark, the palpable fear comes.

maybe each round i’ll get a little bit less wobbly (though, having lived with myself and my keen imagination for all of these years now, i tend to doubt that). maybe i won’t be tempted to imagine the worst.

but the flip side, the smarter side, even now, even at the less-than-three-weeks-to-go mark, is that the hovering worry makes me sink deeper and deeper into the now. “today is a day when i don’t know anything’s wrong yet,” i sometimes hear myself saying. i suppose there are healthier ways to frame the day (for instance, omitting the “yet”), but once the doctor stamps the C word onto your chart, once it follows you pretty much wherever you go, it gets decidedly hard to unshackle yourself from being afraid.

remember, i’m bumpily, raggedly, very much human.

which is why a necessary ingredient on this bumpy, pock-riddled road is to enlist a battalion of comrades. some are fellow travelers i know up close and personal. a few are glorious souls i only know through their words, words they beam to me as if telepathic lifelines to put oomph where i’m lacking.

whether they’re friends whose numbers i could find in my phone, or soulmates by circumstance, they’re all someones who know by heart how it is to live in the penumbra of cancer. what i find utterly indispensible about each and every one of them is that they put words to the rumblings i’d otherwise keep under lock and key.

and when you hear the worst of your worries, the very words you’ve not yet dared to utter aloud, come out of a mouth that’s not yours, there comes an incomparable sigh, a sheer and certain relief to find you are hardly alone. and deep in communion, even if it’s a union to which you wish you didn’t belong.

one of my incomparable comrades is suleika jaouad, the best-selling author of between two kingdoms: a memoir of a life interrupted, the new york times writer of the “life interrupted” column, and every week in my inbox, the author of “the isolation journals,” her unfolding and intimate chronicle of her rare leukemia and relapse and bone marrow transplant. she’s one of the ones whose wisdom and courage i lean on. she infuses me. and, often, she steadies me.

just the other day, after a weeks-long silence that signaled something amiss, suleika, who indeed has suffered yet another relapse and is back to chemotherapy, mused about radical acceptance.

she wrote:

That’s not to say I don’t feel fear—of course, I do. But strangely, the anticipation of pain can be far scarier than just being in it, actually confronting it. After my first transplant, in the years when I was cancer-free, I felt hijacked by the prospect of a recurrence and afraid that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. When it actually happened, I faced it. Knowing that, I have been trying to practice a kind of radical acceptance of whatever comes up, responding with whatever the situation calls for.

Take last weekend, for example. On Saturday, I had to go in for my last infusion of my second round of chemo. The side effects compound day-to-day, and afterward I felt awful, and I knew I’d be spending the day in bed. It had been a rainy morning, but on my way home, the sky began to clear, and I beheld a spectacular rainbow. For a moment, I glimpsed a sense of wonder. When I got to my room, I said to myself, “If I have to be in bed all day, so be it. What can I do to make this a little less miserable?” I took some anti-nausea meds and got a big glass of water. I put on my favorite face oil, wrapped myself a heating pad, gathered my pups around me, and queued up some favorite old movies to watch. Did I still feel awful? Yes. But instead of fighting it, or lamenting all of the things I wouldn’t be able to accomplish that day, I accepted it. And it turned out that staying in bed all day felt almost luxurious.

she speaks such truth. and then she somehow wraps it in what feels like a velvet blanket, somehow makes even a day in the sickbed sound a bit like a day at the spa. no wonder suleika is someone whose hand i would reach for on the darkest and scariest of days.

even though she wouldn’t know me if i bumped into her in the revolving door of sloan-kettering (a hospital entrance both of us have spun through) i wrote her right away to thank her for planting seeds of courage that some day might be my ballast. and i seized on her phrase, “radical acceptance,” to try to put it to practice. to not let my fears escape from the barnyard. to not be hijacked by fear, but to stare it square on, and to remind myself that time and again in my fair little life, i’ve steadied my knees and my spine in the fulcrum of whatever would have been my worst fear. i’ve always been braver than i’d ever imagined. i think we all are.

another one of my unparalleled big-hearted compatriot warriors who speaks to my deepest-down soul is the spoken-word poet and queer activist andrea gibson, diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021 and a recurrence last spring. i can’t count the times she’s sprung me to tears. tears of recognition. of stripped-naked truths. of beauty so rare and so fine i sometimes imagine she dwells with celestial beings.

here’s a line from one of her poems that stiffened my spine and reminded me to steady my ways:

My worst fear come true. But stay with me y’all-
because my story is one about happiness
being easier to find once we finally realize
we do not have forever to find it.

we do not have forever to find it…

i play their words over and over, as if a broken record, hoping and hoping that with each spin of needle to groove, i might finally inscribe their wisdom, their wonder, their truth, onto my heart. or at least find a strong steady hand to hold while i aim there….

what steadies you when you’re afraid?

22 Comments

January 19, 2024

i-can’t-get-warm-enough cooking, an arctic imperative

on days when the mercury out the kitchen window is barely visible through stalactites of ice, and, from what i can make out, it appears that the high for the day hovers far below the murky line at zero, there are choices to be made: you can curl in a quivering ball under your strata of blanket; or you can strip off the flammable parts (the wraps with dangling clusters of ignitable threads) and post yourself boldly in front of the six-burner, commercial-grade range that fell into your custody the long-ago day you signed for the old shingled house with the ricketiest of windows.

i opted for six-burner range.

and all through the arctic siege, i cooked anything i could get my mitts on: simmering stews, bubbling soups, sheetpans of roots, just about any comestible that called for application of flame. i might have been fooling only myself, but i pretended it put some level of purpose to my bone-level desire to rub up against any surface weighing in at greater than zero degrees. the imprecise dial that purports to crank the oven all the way to 450 is my most-cherished doodad of late.

and so in a week in which i might have been distraught about the state of the world, and in which i might have been pondering how in heaven’s name to navigate the narrow straits that look to be ahead, i dallied in the kitchen. a wise woman i met the other night let on that as she sees it, her job in dark times is to fill herself with as much light as she possibly can, and then get out in the world to start spilling it.

but first you need to be able to feel the tips of your fingers and toes. and wandering about in the five layers of woollen and fleece and yoga-pant spandex sometimes gets in the way of even apostolic wanderings. so i did what i could: i cooked.

and despite the corona making the rounds, i invited folks in. i might have asked even the mailman had he not spun on his heels before i could stick my neck out the door to extend my relatively-warm invitation. i seemed as hungry for company as i was for the faintest trace of heat. there is something about gathering, even with goosebumps, when trying to chase the cold spell away.

here’s a soup i made for one catch-up lunch, and which i intend to ladle when old globe-trotting cronies gather this weekend to welcome a stray back to the fold.

i-can’t-get-warm-enough tomatoey soup

(aka Provençal Tomato, Basil, Parmesan Soup)
a collective effort with input from Martha Rose Shulman and Ali Slagle and Babs
Time: 1 hour
Yield: Serves four

Martha, one of crunchy-granola cookbook writers I followed back in ancient times (the 1970s), learned to make this soup years ago when she lived in France. She tells us that if there are no fresh tomatoes at hand, use canned. And she thickens with rice or tapioca, which we’re forgoing. Ali chimes in: “What if you could have a tomato soup that was as plush as a cream of tomato but tasted like pure tomato? Enter Parmesan. Simmering tomatoes with a Parmesan rind is like seasoning a bowl of soup with a shaving of cheese 100 times over. It gives the soup an undercurrent of savory fat and salt that only bring out tomato’s best sides. Many specialty groceries sell containers of rinds, but if you can’t find any, stir 1⁄2 cup grated Parmesan into the final soup (or cut off the rind of a wedge you’re working through). Rinds will keep in the freezer for forever, so start saving.” Babs echoes and amplifies both, having plucked the very best bits from each of the kitchen geniuses.

INGREDIENTS
1 – 1.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 -2 medium onion, chopped
4 to 6 garlic cloves (to taste), minced
1/2 tsp. red-pepper flakes
Salt to taste
2 (28-ounce) cans whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes with juice
2 large sprigs basil, or about 16 leaves, plus 2 tablespoons slivered basil for garnish
1 Parmesan rind
Freshly ground pepper to taste

For the Garnishes:
Garlic croutons (thin slices of baguette, lightly toasted and rubbed with a cut garlic
Grated or shaved Parmesan

PREPARATION
––Heat oil over medium heat in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven. Add onion. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about five minutes. Stir in half the garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds to a minute. Add the tomatoes, basil sprigs or leaves and remaining garlic. Cook, stirring often, 15 to 20 minutes.

––Add Parmesan rind and salt to taste. Bring to a simmer, cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer 30 minutes. Remove basil sprigs and Parmesan rind. Puree in a blender in small batches, taking care to place a towel over the top of the blender and hold it down tightly. Return to the pot, add pepper to taste and adjust salt. Serve garnished with garlic croutons and/or Parmesan, if desired, and slivered basil leaves. If serving cold, which I decidedly am not, refrigerate until chilled.

Tip:
Advance preparation: The soup will keep for two or three days in the refrigerator and can be frozen.

and here’s a peek at that beefy-root stew i made last week as the many snows fell. it fueled me through to the last succulent drop of its leftover bits, which i zapped just the other night when the day had kept me too far from my heat post to start from scratch all over again….

to what do you turn when your insides need warming? is it a cookstove, a voluminous book, or are you more inclined to strap on your snowshoes and slap through the woods?

p.s. i fully realize that opening cans (see soup above) hardly qualifies as cooking, but it’s warm and it’s red, and in my book it qualifies as delicious.

13 Comments

May 26, 2023

catching my breath . . .

catching my breath is something i do quite often these days. my breath runs away from me. or it gets lost deep down inside me, down where the sacs of my lungs are no longer, i sometimes imagine. and i steady myself in ways i like to think are inconspicuous: i lean against walls, i grab onto the arm of whomever i’m walking with. i plop swiftly onto the nearest flat plane. i lurch to a pause in the thick of a sentence, one that never would have stopped me before.

but the breath i’m catching this week is the breath that comes from deeper than lungs. it’s the breath of being home, of feeling swept into the holy embrace of the nooks and crannies you know by heart. the ones on which you’ve been keeping watch for whole long decades. the ones you sense keep watch on you.

especially the ones in the garden, the patch of earth you call your own. where every square inch is a story unfolding, a story that bedazzles me, that fills me with wonder, a story that feels like watching the impossible prove the possible: like how, after three years of being nothing but prickly canes and leaves, does the raspberry bush know to put forth teeny tiny clusters of what will be sunbursting shades of fat juicy berries? or how, out of the stark and bare ground, does the fern know to jut forth frill upon frill of feathery fronds, tight curled into commas that only slowly relent? and how, pray tell, does the red-breasted robin know right where in the grass to pluck out a worm? (here’s a hint: the robins can hear the slithering of the worm underground. how’s that for astonishing wonder?!?!)

because i’m sauntering at the slowest of paces these days, i find my long silent spells in the garden particularly punctuated by questions like these. and the answers that come, given their long-winded meanders and the places they take me along the circuitous way, give me plenty of time to consider how all of creation proclaims the one certain truth i need in these days: there is an animating force, beyond comprehension, and as it choreographs the turning of this holy earth and the unfolding of wonder, so too it keeps watch over me. which is just another way of saying the God who greens the world is the very God who, so too, keeps me so tenderly, tenderly close.

being home, being back in my garden, is the closest i know to curling into the palm of my God’s holy clutch.

we’re only home for the shortest of spells, which is why i’m so busily catching my breath here. last week we were away for a longer stretch of days––truth be told––than i’d felt ready to be, but it was the graduation of that boy i so love. and it was, uncannily, at the very same time, ultimate frisbee, the national championship. for three days in the sun, and the rain, perched on the sidelines, and under the power lines, in picturesque obetz, ohio. and in a few more days we are going away again: to the city of lights and baguettes and the eiffel tower. it’s a rare trip for the whole motley lot of us, and i can’t think of a quartet to which i’d rather belong. even if it means this ol’ homebody is going to have to uproot her slowpoke of a self once again.

a part of me aches to leave so soon. i am, after all, the queen of the homiest homebodies. but, as i work to absorb the wisdoms this hard chapter brings, i will trust my ferns to unfurl, and my not-yet berries to fatten. i will leave the robins and cardinals in charge. and i will inhale the city of lights, and a few baguettes besides.

i long to be home again. home for a long quiet summer. where my breath will be caught, and my lungs will be filled, and, holy God willing, i will be deeper than ever before.

a few treasures before i go….

And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work.
Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.
Mary Oliver (an excerpt from “The Book of Time”)

and this from my friends at SALT Project, who this week bring us denise levertov’s poem about caedmon, the earliest english-writing poet whose name we know, though only one of his compositions—translated as “caedmon’s hymn”—survives. caedmon was a seventh-century northumbrian cowherd, our SALT friends tell us, “who took care of the local monastery’s cattle, and who wasn’t much of a talker or a singer (cowherds would sometimes sing to pass the time, keep the cattle close, and keep predators away).” but “one night in the cowshed, the story goes, an angel inspired him to sing about creation—and he never looked back. convinced he was divinely called, the monastery took him in as a monk, and he wrote lyrics for songs on Genesis, Exodus, the New Testament, and more, always honoring God the Creator. so when it comes to the English language, the earliest poet we know of was a composer praising creation.”

in “caedmon,” levertov imagines that fateful night, to tell the story of an ordinary, humble person who’s given the courage to speak, create, and sing.

*one other note, from SALT: “a twist / of lit rush” refers to a rushlight, an old, inexpensive sort of candle (essentially a wick of rush drenched in fat).

Caedmon

All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I’d wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I’d see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me — light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
into the ring of the dance.

+ Denise Levertov

how do you catch your breath?

a heavenly friend arrived at my door with a library of my books, in miniature.

p.s. i promise a few picture postcards from paris….

happy blessed day to my beloved jan, safe harbor for so many years. may this year bring you those things of which you dream….

14 Comments

December 2, 2022

’tis always the season for futzing . . . (at the cookstove, anyway . . .)

a hundred thousand years ago, at a bend in my life when i was mostly a dreamer, and under a rather dark cloud, i hoped i might grow up to be the sort of someone with friends who come for saturday lunch. i’d also hoped i’d live in a house where the walls were stacked in books, rows upon rows of them. and, for reasons that escape me, i dreamed of a bespectacled mate, one with his nose often in books; something of the professorial sort. check, check, and check, lo and behold.

not a day goes by that i don’t all but bend my creaky knees, and press them against the floorboards, whispering not only thank you’s, but practically screeching, holy mackerel how did my dimly-lit hopes come tumbling true?

but about that saturday lunch: there is something in particular about company lunch on a saturday that seems so, well, civilized. cultured, even. people with big ideas come for lunch. to get a jump on the thinking perhaps. to cogitate and prognosticate by the light of the sun. (people who want to plop on a couch inhaling hotdogs and football, they come for lunch too, but they’re not the ones of my attention today.)

dinner by candlelight is a whole nother thing, a thing that might entail the tucked-away china and silver. lunchtime, though, is cozier, maybe with a soupçon of euro-sophistication (it’s long been a way of life in paris, barcelona, or rome to insert a midday pause in the chaos, and relish a slow, sumptuous feast, unfurled in the afternoon’s heat.) and, besides, anything more haute than PB&J suggests true commitment to kitchen wizardry.

those who come for lunch, maybe can’t wait.

lunchtime company kicks off their shoes. settles in for old-fashioned simple foods. bounties built on the basics: soup, cheese, bread, fruit, unfettered sweets. (i suppose my tastes––even in menus––tend toward the monastic.)

but it’s not something i’ve ever done much of. not the sitting-down sort of a lunch. the lunch that’s not pulled from a grease-splattered paper sack, or laid out on the rickety old door of a table i refuse to retire out on our porch (the protests rise higher and higher, summer after summer, as the rickety door grows more and more rickety, but i like it too much to admit its demise).

at six-point-five decades and counting, i am still very much stumbling along. trying to make good on a few more of my dreams before my time is expired.

so it’s no small deal that company’s coming for lunch on the morrow. this particular company is coming with a wee baby, the most scrumptious sort of company i can imagine (especially since i’m not seeing any babes anywhere on the horizon here at this old house). this company is someone i dearly love though i’ve only just known him for the last several months (it was pretty much love at first zoom). he’s a new papa who is achingly in love with his new baby boy. and because he wrote me a bracingly beautiful, deeply vulnerable, letter the other day, i know this lunch will commence in the deep end, where feelings hew close to the heart, and eloquent words are put to the truths. i imagine there might be a tear or two, adding a droplet of salt to the menu.

in dreaming up the sort of lunch that might set the mood for the day, i settled on high comfort: grilled cheese and tomatoey soup, though i’m taking both up a whole notch.

grilled cheese is truly straightforward: bread + butter + cheese. sizzle low and slow for high-level melt. my aim is to dream up a scheme to make these ahead, and slice them into fingers, thus giving me the chance to stack them into a geometry of puzzling dimension (think: jenga of oozy-cheese strips).

and the soup prompted a deep dive into the cookery books, where i’ve settled on a non-negotiable trinity: san marzano tomatoes (tinned, as the lovely brits would put it), basil in leaves and stems, and rind of parmesan. a dribble of red-pepper flakes, an ooze of olive-y oil, a few cloves of garlic, and an overnight slumber in the fridge should provide a bowlful of summer in the darkening days of early december.

because i’m an inveterate futzer, and usually can’t manage to leave well enough alone, i almost never take one recipe’s word for the matter. i like to peruse and muse, and mix things up, culling my plot till it’s just the right calibration. in my mind, i’m cooking before i ever step near the cookstove, before i’ve laced up my apron strings.

because we’re at the cusp of the darkening season, with a few more weeks till the longest, darkest night of them all, it seems a fine moment to haul out the soup pot, and commence the stirring.

here, should you have reason for a saturday lunch, and find yourself in the mood for a summery bowl, is my game plan for provencal tomato, basil, parmesan soup, brought to you by a cooking collective.

Tomato, Basil, Parmesan Soup, a collective effort…

call me a futzer, or call me a fiddler (or maybe even a muddler), i cannot keep from plucking a little this, a little that, to reach for the stars. And so it goes at the cookstove, when more often that not i stand with an array of roadmaps and mull over the smart way to go. a parmesan rind from Column A, stems of basil from B. 1 + 1 = 3 in my arithmetic book.

here’s my final equation, when the assignment was a splendid tomato basil soup with undernote of parmesan for saturday lunch with a friend….

Provençal Tomato, Basil, Parmesan Soup

By Martha Rose Shulman and Ali Slagle and Babs

Time: 1 hour
Yield: Serves four

Martha learned to make this soup years ago when she lived in France. She tells us that if there are no fresh tomatoes at hand, use canned. And she thickens with rice or tapioca, which we’re forgoing, at least on the first go-round. Ali chimes in: “What if you could have a tomato soup that was as plush as a cream of tomato but tasted like pure tomato? Enter Parmesan. Simmering tomatoes with a Parmesan rind is like seasoning a bowl of soup with a shaving of cheese 100 times over. It gives the soup an undercurrent of savory fat and salt that only bring out tomato’s best sides. Many specialty groceries sell containers of rinds, but if you can’t find any, stir 1⁄2 cup grated Parmesan into the final soup (or cut off the rind of a wedge you’re working through). Rinds will keep in the freezer for forever, so start saving.” Babs echoes and amplifies both, having plucked the very best bits from each of the kitchen geniuses.

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 to 6 garlic cloves (to taste), minced
1/2 tsp. red-pepper flakes
Salt to taste
2 (28-ounce) cans whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes with juice, or 4 pounds tomatoes, cored and diced
Pinch of sugar (optional)2 large sprigs basil, or about 16 leaves, plus 2 tablespoons slivered basil for garnish
[i’m skipping Ali’s call for 1 quart water (or 1/2 wine, 1/2 water), because i’m doubling up on San Marzano tomatoes]
6 ounces Parmesan rind
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1⁄4 cup rice or tapioca (optional; i’m trying without it. if necessary, we’ll float our grilled cheese bits in the tomatoey pond.)

For the Garnishes
Garlic croutons (thin slices of baguette, lightly toasted and rubbed with a cut garlic
Grated or shaved Parmesan

PREPARATION
—Heat oil over medium heat in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven. Add onion. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about five minutes. Stir in half the garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds to a minute. Add the tomatoes, sugar (if adding), basil sprigs or leaves and remaining garlic. Cook, stirring often, until tomatoes have cooked down and smell fragrant, 15 to 20 minutes.

––Add Parmesan rind and salt to taste. Bring to a simmer, cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer 30 minutes. (If adding the tapioca or rice, add it at the 15-minute mark, then simmer for the remaining 15 minutes until tapioca is tender and the soup fragrant.) Remove basil sprigs and Parmesan rind. Puree in a blender in small batches, taking care to place a towel over the top of the blender and hold it down tightly. (Martha adds: If you used fresh unpeeled tomatoes and want a silkier soup, put through a strainer, using a spatula or the back of a ladle to push the soup through.) Return to the pot, add pepper to taste and adjust salt. Serve garnished with garlic croutons and/or Parmesan, if desired, and slivered basil leaves. If serving cold, refrigerate until chilled.

Tip:
Advance preparation: The soup will keep for two or three days in the refrigerator and can be frozen.

what wintry recipe will you be bringing to your lunchtime table?

10 Comments

January 14, 2022

in praise of eeyore

in all the annals of children’s literature, there deserves to be a shelf devoted to one gloomy donkey. eeyore is his name, a name derived from a phonetic spelling of the sound the farmyard friend is alleged to make. i say “alleged” because i cannot claim that i’ve leaned against a split-rail fence and listened in for just the way he hees and haws.

i write in praise of this misanthropic fellow, forlorn as the day is long, this chap who ambles through the hundred-acre wood tossing out lines wholly hollowed of all hope––for instance, “it’s not much of a tail, but i’m attached to it,” or, when someone pins a red balloon to where his tail went missing, he sighs, “sure is a cheerful color. guess i’ll have to get used to it”––because just yesterday i felt his every pain, and found myself cheered to be so deeply in his shadow.

it was an eeyore sort of day, and i was in an eeyore sort of slump (my best, best friend had three biopsies the day before, someone else was positive for covid, and i’ve not shaken the last of my own red-ringed devil although i’m due to board a plane to NYC tomorrow). and it made me think how fine a thing it was and is for a child to have an eeyore on the shelf, to feel some kinship when the world turns gloomy grey and a few good hours of slumping around in self-defined misery is not such a bad thing. it’s part of human nature. etched into the very dips and hollows of any old EKG, for starters. and it made me think that our gloomier angels deserve a moment’s appreciation. so here i am appreciating.

if not for grey, wouldn’t rosy raspberry be just another shade from the far side of the color wheel?

i’ve known souls who never seem to veer off the happy plane, and frankly they worry me. it simply cannot be a fact of nature that optimism is ever present. i like a little deviation in my moods. how on earth can you fully appreciate the good days, if you’ve not felt the uptick from down in the doldrums?

of course, i’m not rooting myself down where misery loves its company. like cloudy skies, it passes. and, after all, by day’s end at least a few of yesterday’s bumps had smoothed (the kid with positive covid PCR–a kid hunkered down in our basement just the night before–took another test and this one proved him negative; and this meant we didn’t need to seal our own college kid in a cellophane wrap, keep him home from college for an extra week, figure out just how to get him off to school without infecting every other passenger in sight).

all i’m saying is that i am grateful that in turning the pages of alan alexander milne’s classic children’s tale, a wee child sodden with sadness might find a kindred shadow in the likes of dear friend eeyore. no one likes to be alone in sorrow. i know very few who would appreciate a swift “get over it” when feeling wearied by the world, with no quick fix in sight.

and so i burrow against the contours of the dreary donkey. i embrace his full expression of how dark it sometimes feels. and, unlike eeyore, i look forward to the dawn when the sky is once again awash in pretty pink.

i can’t quite think of a question, so i offer simply this: if you’re feeling eeyore glum, may you find some tiny shred of solace in knowing you are not alone. one thing to contemplate might be this: what are the few ties to hope that sometimes pull you from the doldrums? do you have any tricks up your sleeve that chase the clouds away?

please pray for my beloved auntie M, as she is known in these parts, and where she has been my number one love angel since the very day she walked into my life—and my heart—my sophomore year of college.

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Category: seeking comfort