To Begin Again...

This lake received my family during the Great Recession, when it was an affordable getaway. And it took us in during the Pandemic, when it was away from others, secluded and safe. Then my leg decided to grow a tumor, and that lake hugged us once again.

This past weekend we visited her beauty, one more time. And my family took turns standing on the dock. Witnesses to something, as we remembered yesterday and planned for tomorrow. To the right, to the left, and straight across those sparkling waters. And I looked at a photo from last year, taken two days before I lost my leg...the last photo of me whole in my body. Before my leg left to join a sarcoma research study at the University of Minnesota.

Off to be somewhere without me, and me without it.

So on that dock, my mind landed on all sorts of days and seconds and minutes from the last year. Because sometimes we must look back for awhile, before we can go forward. Of course I thought of how we all go on journeys, and that sometimes we rest on these trips, suspended between what was and what will be for us. When we must be still for awhile, even as the world might tell us to hurry on or get through something faster...to reach our destination quicker...when in our traveler's heart we know our best pace. We know it, yes we do, if we listen deeply and well.

My mind wandered many places, while I stood on that dock.

Once upon a time....

...I remembered waking from surgery, looking frantically for my leg. Opioids numbed my sadness and threw a lifeline to my next moment. I remembered the ecstasy of knowing the surgery was behind me, as it had loomed with such fear to my already weary body. I remembered the cheer of nurses and doctors determined to move people like me to something different, something better, someone healed. And I remembered my surgeon asking if I had a place to sit at home where I could see the birds.

Go and watch the birds, Julie, he encouraged...

...as my eyes must have betrayed a frantic unknowing of how ever to live my life again.

But I left my leg in that hospital, and went to find the birds. And I began my new life and learned many things.

I learned that stairs can be scooted up on one's butt, and scooted down too. That sadness comes when we resist change, and peace comes when we embrace change as different, not bad. I learned that gratitude can change a day from dark to bright in the space of a second, when one chooses with a steely will to see the good, the joyful, the divine. Our blessings surely, not our lack. The birds in my yard introduced me to raccoons and squirrels, who I had not noticed before but who began to show me the popcorn popping joy of just surviving and claiming one's right to be on this planet...through all our seasons, even Winter.

I learned that PET scans, a view into one's whole body, can be downright terrifying, and then a mighty patience and grace is required for our fear. Maybe a sedative too. That it is okay to fall dizzy into another's care, to let go and trust that someone will catch you. And that our beloveds can circle around, hold us up, refusing any idea that we be taken from them. I learned that our minds can write simply awful stories of peril, so we must exercise discipline and quiet them sometimes, turning to our hearts. To a most holy place, where all is magic and well, forever and ever, like a fairy tale, except it is real. For we are all okay, in the beginning and middle and end of our lives. When all is said and done, there is peace that passes understanding, for certain our happily ever after.

And I began to read fairy tales with queens and kings, knights and fair maidens...for they faced dragons bravely, valiant in their battles, victorious in their adventures. They built castles on bogs and rode horses through fog that always lifted by The End. I learned that anything of beauty is a mood lifter, and that arranging one's books by color makes life merrier, something simple to distract us from one exam and 150 and yet even more. I learned that naps can heal in ways no medicine can do. I learned that asking someone about their story can distract me from my own...and that a hospital roommate named Mary could teach me more in one day than I learned in my 56 years before, just perhaps. With her tears and and sobs and pleas for life, a clarion call to appreciate our gift of time more...when errands and distractions and petty grievances crowd out our determination to live now and to live better. To really live the saying "seize the day"...rather than gaze at it once in a while, embroidered and framed on a wall.

I learned that breathing really does carry us to our next moment, past this or that fearful thing...and that it is okay to break down and sob in front of doctors, for the best are just that good at receiving us in our brokenness, our time of need, reminding them exactly and precisely why they labored through all those years of gritty medical training. I learned that a friend in Kenya with breast cancer didn't get near the same brilliant medical treatment as me...and that it is hard to reconcile this savage inequality in our world, as one lies crying in a tub for that friend, who has since passed away. And in that same bathtub, I watched how my body could turn yellow and spotty, shrink away in size, but that same body could return to a state of recognition, after a mighty battle had been waged and won. For while I learned that chemo curls are sweet...it is sweeter still to have hair return to its straighter ways. Even if not as pretty as those ringlets perhaps...but more me and less sick...which feels oh so good, to be farther from something.

But there are some things I learned most of all. The gold in my treasure chest. I learned that prayer is important, no it is essential, and that angels and archangels and all the company of heaven exist, indeed...and not far away but all around me. And you too. That sometimes these angels are celestial and sometimes they come in the form of love and a husband who pulls you into one appointment after another on a little black scooter. Or as a friend or family who go out of their way and out of their fast day...to call and say hello, as we lay exhausted on a bed, plucked out from our normal run-around lives for awhile. Just awhile. And I learned that most people are kind, running to open doors and offering a smile as I sometimes stumble in or out...

...you can do this, you can. You can do it. I believe in you, their glances tell me, most always and everywhere now.

So I stood on that dock, listening over and over to a favorite song by the Shins. The words go like this: "Somehow we coast to the end, change lies in every direction so now I guess we'll just begin again."

Mary Oliver's beautiful words rang then, "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Tucking that question into my jacket, my gaze flew to the sky. To the heavens. And I whispered a fairy tale in my heart, for my future....

...and I turned around to walk into my life.

To begin again.

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