A Gathering of Kind Friends

Last night my beloved poetry friends who write and appreciate poetry joined in a warm zoom square love for my birthday, all orchestrated by the amazing Nancy Maland. They all read their favorite poems and sent them to me. Some even created poems for me. I was so honored. I don’t have adequate words to express how grateful I am for these women who shared their work with us all. The ribbon reads a gathering of friends. Truly. One friend— Elaine Oswald—zoomed from Scotland and it was late for her, 11:30.

Also Leah Carmon, poet laureate of Knoxville attended. She’s impressively a math teacher and mother of two (one who has autism) and she herself has an autoimmune disease that requires chemo infusions.

People also dropped by all day with flowers and candy. Dan brought me red roses. People wrote lovely notes in texts or on facebook.

Marcia Goldenstein, artist emerita at UT, designed the box that holds my friend’s’ poetry.. Her most recent, amazing work is doing embroideries of famous women activists through history. Check out her link. it’s called Women in Stitches. If you scroll through the link you can see her detailed faces. You’ll be stunned. https://marciagoldenstein.com/section/381168-Women-in-Stitches.html?fbclid=IwAR30Up1apxouxW0Q0auHRWqGbJ42XD1qWCh7nvGGwMvOW0Xc_sxwuokV2Uw T

I had chemo yesterday for 5 hours including a B 12 injection and will get a magnesium injection today bc it’s low.

I sat beside a newbie with cancer. She’s a 75-yr-old fitness instructor with stage 1+ cancer Her2-nu positive, no metastasis. She she was in shock as we all are when we hear the word cancer and chemo even if we’re stage 0. She was worried about losing her hair—I gave her advice. She already has 3 wigs she loves. I told her to go ahead and shave her head. It’s easier than watching it all clump out. I told her cold caps not worth it. You want to get rid of fast growing cells with chemo—not preserve them with cold. She asked the questions. I don’t offer advice unless asked. Her head was already swimming.

I told her she’d do fine—that they have great drugs for her kind of cancer and not to let my recurrences scare her. I was 3c, the bad triple negative. I was probably 4 from the start (metastatic de novo) ) and will be on chemo the rest of my life, but I have a good life. I’m still fine after 146 chemos and that by being in shape I’ve withstood them, so she has advantages. She called me her new friend. I often selfishly want to listen to my book during chemo but she wanted to talk so I was happy to help. And I told her not to worry about what caused it. I had just heard yesterday that a popular nutritionist just died of head and neck cancer. Child in college. cancer is relentless & non—discriminating. It’s usually just some aberrant cells. I told her to enjoy her life—she was worried about sugar. I told her studies are mixed on that. She should eat healthy but not to worry. Her healthy previous lifestyle will help her. It has me.

She asked why can’t i just have it cut out and I explained many undetectable cells are in your body and they get rid of those with chemo, radiation. She seemed more calm when I left. I was nauseated in pm after 2 anti drugs infused so I took a zophran when i got home.

With all that I was apprehensive about how the evening would go but it was uplifting! I was so touched all these women attended despite busy schedules. Love them all. Gentle, smart, talented women. How did I get so lucky? So happy to make it to another bday!

By the way, it was also Virginia Woolf’s birthday. A book every woman should read is “A room of one’s own.” Happy to share my bday with her. My MA thesis features her and her “To the lighthouse.”

I’ll close with a favorite poem on kindness. I’m blessed (not in the arrogant sense I deserved any of it) but iI’m appreciative and grateful. The poem is right—you must lose things to become more kind and you must travel to see how others live. As poet Mary Oliver says in Wild Geese “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952-

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say it is i you’ve been looking for and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.