Rooted: At Home On Earth

Finding Courage

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:58:27 -0700

It's February, and for me that marks a peculiar milestone: it's the seventh month in the journey Richard and I are walking with his brain cancer.
We've done remarkably well so far, weathering the bird hallucinations, hospitalizations, brain surgery, cancer diagnosis, moving to Denver for his radiation, and the daily uncertainty about what's next.
But there are moments... like the other week after a storm blanketed the valley in fresh powder, an event that once would have had us throwing our cross-country ski gear in the back of the Subaru and heading out for a couple of hours of bliss.
After the storm, I asked Richard very casually if he thought he might feel like going out for a short ski, just an hour perhaps. His answer was a regretful, "I don't think I'm up for that now."
More than once lately when I've headed out to walk to the Post Office--a walk we usually take together, holding hands and laughing--he's stayed home to "rest his eyes." And he has yet to return to his sculpture work.
He's healthy, his appetite has returned, and he said recently that he's starting to feel almost like his old self again. But....
Right now we're both perhaps too conscious of the days when he doesn't have the energy he once had, or he doesn't recognize people right away, or his formidably powerful brain seems just a beat slow.
And of course we both wonder what these things portend. If anything.
Not every day is beautiful, and not every story ends happily. I know that, and I also know from my own experience with a chronic illness is that healing rarely proceeds in a linear fashion.
Perhaps the most important thing I've learned from my particular health is that life requires courage. Every day.
By courage, I don't mean gritting your teeth and pushing through, nor tensing up and fighting, nor forcing things to happen. I mean facing what comes with an open heart and as much honesty as possible.
Courage, says the dictionary, is "the ability to do something that frightens one; strength in the face of pain and grief." The words originates with the Latin cor, or "heart."
That root is key, I think. Courage is strength that comes from the heart: the power of faith and love.
So I will screw up my courage, dig deep in my heart and have faith that whatever comes for Richard and me, we'll be all right. Whatever that means.
Take heart, I say to myself.
And saying it, I do. I take heart at his strong poses in our morning yoga routine, when we share the wonder of the silver crescent of the waning moon rising before dawn, when he laughs out loud, when he tucks eagerly into a meal, when he holds out his hand to steady me.
Courage is a gift we can all give each other; it wells up from each of our hearts. It'll carry Richard and me through--whatever comes.
Copyright 2010 Susan J. Tweit

Pinyon Jays and Townsend's Solitaires: Forest-Propagating Birds

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:08:00 -0700

Piñon pine-juniper woodlands, the fragrant expanses of short, spreading trees that grow from northern Mexico through the American Southwest, are sometimes called "the bird forest" because birds play a crucial part in propagating both piñon pines and junipers.
Each kind of tree depends on a particular bird: piñon pines rely on pinyon jays (botanists spell the pine's name in the original Spanish; ornithologists use the English transmogrification); junipers on Townsend's solitaires.
Most pines disperse their feather-weight, winged seeds on the wind; piñons opted for plump, wingless seeds instead. So piñons, rooted in place, enlist flocks of birds to "fly" their seeds to new sprouting sites.
How does the tree entice the bird to cooperate?
Bribery. Piñons grow upward-facing cones at the end of stout branch tips, positively inviting a bird to land and probe for seeds. And what seeds they find!
Piñon nuts are more fat-rich than Ben and Jerry's, weighing in at a whopping 3,000 calories per pound. Unlike ice cream though, piñon nuts remain viable for months or years when buried in the cool environment below the surface of the soil.
Hence their appeal to the gregarious jays that live in flocks of 25 to 100 birds and range a hundred or more miles in search of food. Pinyon jays nest and raise their young communally, and stash their communal larder of food (mostly piñon nuts) in the soil at their nesting ground.
When a pinyon jay flock locates piñon pines with ripe cones, the birds land, pry open the cone scales with long, sharp beaks, and test each nut for soundness, shaking and tapping it carefully before stashing it in their crop.
After packing in up to 60 pine nuts, a pinyon jay flies to the communal larder, stashes its seeds, and then returns to harvest more. A flock can store 4.5 million nuts a year; uneaten seeds sprout, growing into new piñon groves.
Junipers enlist birds to distribute their progeny as well. Instead of enticing birds with plump seeds, they surround their miniature cones with carbohydrate-rich flesh.
In order to protect the fragile seeds inside from being ground up by the teeth of foragers like mice, deer, or people, junipers poison the flesh with terpenes, fragrant compounds that render it virtually inedible. In winter, when the seeds are ripe and ready for dispersal, terpene levels drop, and the flesh turns from green, a color birds do not distinguish, to a more bird-eye-catching bluish-purple hue.
Flocks of robins and bluebirds sometimes converge to eat juniper berries, but the tree's most dependable partner is a slender gray, solitary thrush with a white eye ring, the Townsend's solitaire.
In summer, solitaires eat insects in high-mountain forests; in winter, they move downhill to feed on juniper berries, digesting the starchy flesh but not the seeds, which pass out encased in a protective layer of bird scat, ready to germinate.
Hence the bird forest, a woodland whose main tree species depend on avian partners to propagate the very trees that provide the birds' food.
Copyright 2010 Susan J. Tweit

Piñon-Juniper Woodland: The Polka Dot Forest

Wed, 3 Feb 2010 09:37:37 -0700

When you look up at the lower slopes of the mountainsides around town the forest initially appears homogeneous. But with a closer look, patterns appear.
At the lower edge of this forest belt, the trees are short, rounded, and spaced evenly, like dark polka-dots against lighter ground. That's the piñon pine-juniper woodland, often called the polka-dot forest for that regular spacing.
This unique community of lives thrives in the desert-like conditions of lower treeline: hot summers, sunburn-intense sunlight, low annual precipitation (averaging 12 to 18 inches), and high evapotranspiration, the amount of water the sun, wind, and heat can suck out of soil and plant alike.
The woodland is named for the two types of trees that dominate its canopy: piñon pines and junipers. Together, they identify an entire ecosystem, a community of interwoven plant and animal lives that dominates some 75,000 square miles of northern Mexico and the Southwest, including the lower elevations of our valley.
What's a piñon pine? First, a linguistic redundancy: piñon means "pine" in Spanish, so it's a "pine pine."
Piñons (there are eleven species, including the Colorado piñon, or Pinus edulis) are the most drought-hardy of North American pines. They're shortish trees, topping out at no more than 40 feet, but more commonly 20, and often nearly as broad as they are tall, with stout trunks and rough gray bark.
Their needles are short as well, up to two inches long, usually clustered in groups of two, three or five, depending on the species, and always coated with wax to protect them from sunburn and water loss.
Piñons are perhaps best-known for their plump seeds, pine nuts so fat-rich that they are prized by people and many other species, including pinyon jays. Piñon nuts are the Dove bars of the nut world, averaging 3,000 calories per pound.
Then there's the spicy fragrance of the tree's foliage and wood, an unforgettable perfume in piñon wood smoke. This fragrance stems from ethyl caprilate, a natural chemical piñons make to render their tissues inedible to grazers from tiny mites to browsing elk.
Like piñon pines, junipers are also fragrant, and they're also short, rounded trees with roots that can reach 60 feet deep to tap ground water.
The distinctive scent of juniper berries and foliage comes from another class of aromatic chemicals called terpenes, natural compounds these trees make to deter grazers and also discourage other plants from competing for scarce water and nutrients. Terpenes flavor gin, which is named for the French word for juniper.
Unlike piñon needles, juniper leaves are reduced to minuscule, overlapping scales; juniper cones are covered with a thick layer of flesh, like berries.
Both of these fragrant, drought-tolerant evergreens partner with birds to spread their seeds and prepare them for germination. Piñon trees depend on sky-blue pinyon jays, junipers on dappled gray Townsend's solitaires, relatives of robins.
This tight relationship is why the fragrant woodlands characteristic of a whole arid region are sometimes called the bird forest.
Copyright 2010 Susan J. Tweit

Feeling Lucky

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:53:15 -0700

"You're so lucky!" commented a reader in response to my story about the week I spent teaching a creative writing workshop on Isla Espiritu Santo off Baja California.
Lucky is not the word I would have chosen to describe my life over the past five months. I can't say that I feel lucky to have ended up with Richard in the hospital last September instead of enjoying our joint artist-writer residency in the San Juan Mountains.
I don't feel lucky to have had the rest of the year swallowed by testing, consults, another hospitalization for brain surgery, and then the brain cancer diagnosis that required we move to Denver for his radiation and chemo treatments.
Leaving Richard behind while I took off for Mexico the day after Christmas to take the trip we'd dreamed of for so long, I certainly didn't feel lucky.
On reflection though, I realize I am lucky, in the sense of fortunate. I had a magical week on Isla Espirtu Santo, and Richard was there to return to, cared for by Molly, who took a week of her life to help out.
Things could be much worse. I'm not channeling Pollyanna here--they really could.
Luck, as I see it, is partly how you deal with what life brings. In that respect, I am very fortunate.
I'm lucky that we've been able to approach Richard's serious health crisis with a great deal of equanimity. Back when we first had an inkling that something was wrong, when the bird hallucinations visited his brain, we determined to walk forward hand and hand and to take what came with grace.
We've stuck to that resolve by and large, and I'd say that our intention to walk this strange path together with mindful hearts is part of why it hasn't been worse.
Here's what else makes me feel lucky, in no particular order:
Richard, who loves me without restriction or expectation
Our families, especially Molly, my folks, and my brother and sister-in-law and their girls and families, who have given us so much love and support
You: My friends, readers, colleagues--you have been so generous with your comments, sympathy, understanding, your light and love
The doctors, nurses, technicians, and aides at the VA Hospital who have cared for Richard, all of whom seem to actually care
This planet: Earth, the only home our species has ever known, and the extraordinary community of lives that animates it--a daily inspiration
My work: The opportunities to speak and write the words in my head and heart. For me, writing is love made evident, and I do love this life, each day, every dawn, every sunset, and all the hours between.
So yes, I am lucky.
Luck's hard work though. It's the attitude to you bring to life, the spirit you cultivate, the way you are in every moment of every day.
I intend to honor what I have, and to live my days mindfully, generously, with my heart open.
Thank you all for your help.
Copyright 2010 Susan J. Tweit

Falling in Love Again

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:04:16 -0700

A little over two weeks ago, I woke in La Paz, Baja California del Sur, Mexico, where clouds of neon-bright bougainvillea blossoms hang over courtyard walls, hooded orioles chatter at Anna's hummingbirds, and the air smells like the aromatic desert and the salty Sea of Cortez.
It was the last morning in a trip that included a week spent teaching a creative writing workshop on Isla Espiritu Santo, "Island of the Holy Spirit," a place I've longed to visit for more than three decades.
I now know it's as inspirational as its name, a stark wedge of tan and red volcanic cliffs dotted with tree-sized cardon cactus and spiny desert shrubs, an island that falls straight into a rich sea whose waters shade from clear turquoise near shore to ultramarine depths and teem--not hyperbole in this case--with life from coral-pink coral colonies to whale sharks as long as school buses.
In our week there, we woke to the sound of waves lapping the shore by our room-size tents with pelicans thwocking the water nearby as they dove for sardines, we kayaked azure swells as loggerhead turtles surfaced nearby, snorkeled among playful baby sea lions, we hiked to shelter caves and pictographs.
We were surprised by flying fish bursting out of the water like stars falling upwards, marveled at dolphins arcing next to our skiff, delighted in rock iguanas sunning and clouds of butterflies hovering over desert wildflowers, we savored delicious meals featuring sweet fresh-caught fish and seafood; we heard canyon wrens' descending trills in the morning and great horned owls at night.
Oh, and we wrote. We wrote daily haiku, field notes, essays, stories, poems, and book proposals. We wrote to think, to dream, and to set our courses for the new year; we wrote our way into feeling inspired, empowered, and to knowing our voices.
After a week, I left knowing I had fallen in love with the island named Espiritu Santo, a place full of the spirit of life itself, from the tiniest wildflower thriving in the harsh volcanic soils that receive just four inches of rain a year to the immense blue whales that feed off its shores. I left vowing to return and share its magic.
After a very long day of travel beginning in the shimmering light of the desert before dawn, I finally reached Denver, where I fell in love all over again with the two smiling faces waiting for me outside security: Richard and our daughter, Molly.
That night, I told them stories of the island, of La Paz, and the turquoise sea.
"I want to take you there," I said.
And if all goes well, I will. But now, as Richard snoozes nearby, recovering from his cancer treatments, and Molly has returned to her life in San Francisco, I know that whatever comes, I have all I need.
I am fortunate to have experienced the magic of Isla Espiritu Santo, and luckier still to have come home to the everyday enchantment of my life here.
Copyright 2010 Susan J. Tweit

Lessons from a Big Dog

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:25:29 -0700

At the Post Office recently, someone asked, "How's your Great Dane? I haven't seen her in a long time."
I had to clear the lump from my throat before answering: "She died more than two years ago."
Some dogs stick in your heart. Isis, named for the Egyptian goddess of wisdom and beauty, lives on in Richard's and mine.
Partly it was her size: She outweighed me by around 20 pounds; when we were walking together, my hand rested comfortably on her shoulders and her head reached above my waist.
Partly, it was her looks: On her good side, she was elegant in stark black and white coloring as if wearing a shiny satin black tuxedo with the jacket open to reveal a white chest and belly, and snowy white feet.
Partly, it was her story, written all over the other side of her body: The burn scars running from muzzle to tail, leaving large purple expanses of bare, puckered skin, the shrunken shoulder, a spine with a pronounced 'S' curve.
Isis was rescued from a breeder who ran a puppy mill, confining her 85 dogs outside in ramshackle four-foot by six-foot pens offering no shelter from the weather. (Isis shared her cramped pen with at least two other Great Danes.)
According to Animal Control officials, the place was horrific: the pens stinking of accumulated feces, and lacking drinking water, the dogs malnourished and many--like Isis--with untreated injuries.
Isis was a year and a half old then; at 70 pounds (around half of normal weight), she was emaciated with oozing burns and skin hanging in tatters. The first vet who evaluated her said flatly she should be put down, the second cried but thought she had a chance.
Isis was lucky: Six months of care later, she was healthy enough to adopt.
After we brought Isis home, our big dog shadowed us everywhere we went, from the bank two blocks away, to Richard's folks' house in Arkansas, where she spent hours snoozing on her giant dog bed while we helped with his dad's hospice care.
At feeding time, she pranced in place, long legs nearly tripping over each other, and sang in her best "Roo-roo-roo!" voice. She mastered the art of spinning in joyous donuts in the living room--whirling as fast as she could in tight circles, nose to yard-long tail--and never broke a thing.
She went running with me at dawn, napped nearby while I wrote, and pranced beside Richard and me as we walked around town doing errands.
Isis made friends everywhere she went: Little kids walked right up to her, nose to nose, and stroked her soft head. Old ladies cooed at her.
That's the main reason why she sticks in our hearts. Despite her early abuse--penned up outside in all weather, starved, burned so severely she almost died--Isis loved everyone she met.
Her ability to forgive was an inspiration, her example of love and grace one that Richard and I will never forget.
Copyright 2010 Susan J. Tweit

Words to Begin the New Year

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 15:39:12 -0700

I began the first column of last year with these words: "'Begin as you intend to continue,' my grandmother Chris used to say. That old-fashioned admonition seems especially relevant now, at the beginning of a new year in difficult times."
Last year at this time, I had no idea that the next 12 months would be so difficult, taking Richard and me into the world of brain cancer and all of the life-wrenching changes that come with that diagnosis. Now, looking back, those opening sentences and the next few seem especially prescient:
"Any peril, however unsettling, wrenching, or outright scary, brings opportunity: as our old habits and comforts fall away, we can see and make new choices.
"So in this season where we traditionally muse on what we want to carry forward from the previous year, what we want to dream into being in the new one—and what we'd rather leave behind, I've had my grandmother's admonition in mind: Begin as you intend to continue."
Here we are, beginning 2010. How do I intend to continue?
I've chosen a few words as prompts to remind me of how I want to live and work and be in this year that opens with Richard finishing his course of daily radiation "enhanced" by chemo drugs, a year that offers no guarantees for what is ahead for he and me, separately or together.
Here are my prompt-words, with a suggestion of what they mean to me. Throughout 2010, it's my intention to be:
Open to whatever life brings
Mindful of the truth that this moment--now--is all we really have, which says to me I want to celebrate the gifts I have and not waste time in "what ifs"
Generous in my interactions with others, including other species
Restful--making it a priority to relax and rejuvenate, to restore heart, head, body, and spirit
Loving, as in living with my heart outstretched as if it were my hand, a metaphor adapted from a line in a Mary Chapin Carpenter song, and
Creative in my way of looking at life and work.
I'm practicing being open, creative, and mindful as I search for the opportunities in the situation of Richard's brain cancer. I'm practicing being loving and generous as we adjust our relationship to the challenges of his treatment and the reality that our lives ahead could be very different than we once imagined.
I'm practicing being restful as I learn new ways to take care of myself even as I learn new ways to live my role as Richard's partner and caregiver.
And I'm practicing trust--in myself, in Richard, in our network of family and friends, in the community of this vibrant Earth itself--as I go forward into the days ahead.
Here's my wish for your days: Begin as you intend to continue. Start today on the life you want to create for yourself.
Don't wait, don't make excuses. There really is no time like the present; trust me, I know.
Copyright 2010 Susan J. Tweit

Making Tough Choices

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:57:27 -0700

When you read this column, I'll be sitting on a beach next to the Sea of Cortez, on Isla Espirtu Santo off Baja California. The ocean is turquoise, the cliffs encircling the beach rust-red, dolphins leap out of the water, and the late December sun is warm.
It's a wonderful place, except for one thing:
Richard isn't here with me.
He's in Denver, enduring daily doses of radiation, those lethal gamma rays enhanced by chemotherapy drugs.
Being in Baja when he isn't may be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
This is one of our dream trips, something we couldn't afford to do until I thought up a writing workshop to pay our way. I had signed up a small group, reserved the camp and guides, and had purchased our plane tickets when Richard was diagnosed with brain cancer.
Perhaps naively, we hoped he could take the Baja trip anyway during a break in his radiation and chemo treatment.
Richard's radiation oncologist nixed that idea. The radiation, he explained, has to be done in a continuous chunk of time without substantial breaks. Why? Because cancer cells' resistance to radiation varies just as the mutations in their DNA that make them cancer cells vary.
The least resistant cells die off first, and as the dose of radiation accumulates, the more resistant cancer cells eventually die too. (So do some of the healthy cells, but not, we hope, too many.)
If treatment is interrupted for any reason, the doctor explained, those more resistant cancer cells that have survived keep growing and dividing unchecked. That decreases the chances of successful treatment.
Richard asked the doc if he could wait to start the radiation and chemo until after the Baja trip.
"Maybe," said his radiation oncologist. But sooner is better: the tumor could regrow during that time.
We looked at each other. The choice was clear: Richard would start his treatment as soon as possible; we'd figure out what to do about the trip.
We left the clinic holding hands and headed his fitting with the radiation techs, talking about what to do.
We continued that discussion--and the hand-holding--all the long drive home, across the city, up through the foothills, over Kenosha Pass, across South Park, and down into our own valley.
Finally, we decided: Richard would stay in Denver and I would go to Baja.
It's a tough choice for both of us. I want to be there to coddle him through this grueling treatment; he wants me to nurture myself.
Sometimes taking care of each other means our paths diverge for a while.
When we're apart, we have a ritual that reminds us that we're still connected: at night, we each look up at the moon and think of the other, seeing the same silvery orb sailing across the heavens.
Tonight, look for the moon and send your love out to someone special. Richard and I will be doing that too: one from Denver, one from Baja.
Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit

Lighting the Darkness

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:53:02 -0700

Lighting the Darkness
For more than a decade now, my husband, Richard, and I have celebrated the passing of winter's longest nights by lighting the darkness: we fill dozens of paper bags with sand and votive candles.
On winter solstice, we line our block with these luminarias and at dusk, family and friends arrive to help light them one by one. The tiny flames in their translucent bags burn through the night, heralding the sun's return at dawn.
Winter celebrations across the globe in latitudes where the tilt in Earth's axis shortens the days for part of the year often focus on light. No wonder in these dark, cold times of year when it seems as if the sun retreats until, as if by magic, our celestial source of energy "turns around" after winter solstice and the days gradually grow longer and warmer again.
The lengthening nights inspire the menorah of Hanukkah, Advent and Kwanzaa candles, the Yule log of winter bonfires, and the luminarias that Richard and I light every year, a tradition born in Hispanic New Mexico from fires and hanging paper lanterns lit to guide the procession portraying the Christian Holy Family in their search for shelter.
Holiday lights are meant to illuminate, a word that means "to light up," and also "to explain, make clear, elucidate." Light alleviates spiritual and intellectual darkness, bestowing knowledge and understanding.
As I strike a match to light a wick in the chill of solstice dusk, and place a flaming votive candle on its bed of sand, I think about the lessons luminarias teach. The bags by themselves are flimsy and flammable, the candles too small for robust light, the sand simply grit underfoot.
Yet together, candle, paper bag, and sand combine to illuminate the darkness: each slender wick feeds liquid wax to fuel the flame; the paper walls shelter the flame from wind and snow, and their very flimsiness diffuses light; the sand grounds the bag and prevents the flame from incinerating the paper that protects it.
Inside their flammable shelters the candles burn steadily, hour after hour, through the darkness of a long winter night. When dawn comes, the ethereal lamps are still glowing softly, demonstrating the extraordinary resilience and beauty inherent in the simplest of materials.
As I light another wick and the streetlights wink on, their orange light clouding my view of the heavens, I grieve for those who have never seen the pointillist glory of the stars freckling the night sky, the procession of the planets, and the shimmering river of the Milky Way.
Solstice this year marks not only the return of the sun's light and warmth, but also a personal milestone, the halfway point in Richard's radiation treatment for brain cancer.
In the darkness of that blessed winter night, I will turn my face to the star-spangled heavens and make a wish. And my spirit will glow, lit by the support of those I love and the commonplace grace of small candles burning in simple paper bags.
Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit

Growing Generosity

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:25:36 -0700

These are tough times: the economy tanked last year, the stock market took a corresponding dive, unemployment is up more than in a decade or more, and jobs are not easy to come by. All of which makes it a great time to cultivate generosity and help each other.
Remember the movie "Pay It Forward"? In the screen version of Catherine Ryan Hyde's novel, the hero, 12-year-old Trevor, responds to a social studies assignment to think of and implement an idea for changing the world with this suggestion:
"I do something real good for three people. And when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven."
As Trevor explains the concept, if each person helped in turn helps three more people, the "doing real good" quickly multiples to eighty-one people, then two hundred forty-three, then seven hundred twenty-nine, then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven people helped, and so on.
It may be harder to imagine being generous in tough times, but generosity rewards us in ways that go far beyond the mere dollar value of our contributions.
Recent research shows that generosity enriches us: materially, emotionally, and spiritually. Selfishness and fear, on the other hand, are relentlessly impoverishing, narrowing our lives and relationships, and starving our communities.
Literature is full of stories about the benefits of generosity and the perils of miserliness, from Native American Coyote tales to Charles Dickens' "The Christmas Carol," and "Paying It Forward." Happiness truly is not measured in our accumulation of riches, whatever they may be.
Here are some tips on how to cultivate generosity and pay it forward in your daily life:
Make generosity a daily practice, not just something to check off once a year. You don't need to donate money every day--though if you can, do!--just act in generous ways all the time.
Focus on the issues that are most compelling to you. The abundance of worthy causes can be paralyzing; picking one or several to concentrate on makes your resources and efforts go farther.
Giving isn't just about money. Generosity takes many forms: Offer a smile when one isn't expected, do something helpful out of the blue, lend your talent without engaging the calculus of return, call someone you love for no reason, forgive an old hurt, cheerfully do a task that isn't your responsibility, go out of your way to enrich another life.
Remember Trevor's power of multiplication: If each of us does something "real good" for three others, and they spread the generosity to three more--each--pretty soon the original three have by extension helped out two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven people, and then six thousand, five hundred fifty-one....
At that rate, generosity will spread faster than the H1N1 flu.
Imagine changing the world by the power of simple giving. We can do it, if we start now.
Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit