The Little Orange Book

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“Oh the places you will go!” said Dr Seuss. For me, books are a way of discovering new places. A way of meeting new and interesting people. A way of learning how to grow and change. Books can change us, but the path can be an uphill climb. Or not.

It did not start well for me. In first grade I was uprooted from a school I loved and moved to Southport Elementary. My dad’s dream of starting an engineering business with a friend vanished when his partner unexpectedly had a heart attack. Suddenly, Dad needed a paycheck. While his transition to an engineering job in Indianapolis went well, my transition was a bit bumpy.

At nearly six-feet-tall, Mrs. Walker, my new first grade teacher, intimidated me. Every strand of her blond hair was pulled into a tight bun. She tediously scratched her directions on the board. As Billy Schrader used to say, “She has a stare that can knock you flat.”

One day after reading groups, in front of the entire class, Mrs. Walker asked me, to read aloud from the yellow reader. I felt like she had spit nails at me. My face turned red, and I covered it with my hands to shield myself from the slings and arrows of her words–as well as the stares of my new peers. I could not move. I could not even open my mouth.

Immediately, Mrs. Walker explained she was moving me from one reading group to another.  She used names like, “You are moving from the red bird group to the blue birds.” While I was only six, I knew I was being demoted from the high reading group to a lower group—and all of my new classmates were staring at me with pity. Even Billy Schrader, the class bully.

To this day I can call up the shame of how that moment felt. At six, I was painfully shy, and I had no understanding of how to stand up for myself and explain that I could read every darn word (all 15 of them) in the yellow reader. But I was scared. I told no one. I harbored the pain of my shyness and a fear of reading or speaking in front of others for a long time.

Then I met my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Vawter.  She wore a ring through her nose. Billie Shrader called her “the bull” until he realized you don’t mess with Mrs. Vawter. It took a couple of weeks and several parent conferences, but the woman got Billy Schrader under control. In the end I think Billy liked her. No one had ever made him behave.

And no one read like Mrs. Vawter. After lunch she often read to us from the little orange biography books about the lives of Abe Lincoln or Betsy Ross. She pretended to be the characters, even the animals. When she would clomp across the room like a horse, we shrieked our approval.  I started checking out a little orange biography each night and reading it. On the day I turned in the book on Helen Keller, Mrs. Vawter announced to the class I was a “voracious reader.” Of course, no one knew what that meant, so she laughed and then asked me to share the story of Helen Keller.

For a moment I stood there frozen in my shyness. Now, I loved that little orange book, and Mrs. Vawter knew I did. It took a long hard moment, but somehow I broke past my wall of silence and began to tell that story like I had been born to tell it. With passion. I told about how illness at a young age had stripped Helen Keller of her sight and her hearing, and how Annie Sullivan came into her life and helped her learn words and how to communicate. I talked the longest I had ever talked in any class.  I spoke with the fire of inspiration, for I loved this story.

When I was done, I realized my classmates were staring at me in disbelief, and Billy Shrader announced, “Wow, she speaks!” There was laughter, and it is my first memory of my classmates smiling at me. It felt good.

Mrs. Vawter ushered me into books and stories that inspired me. She helped me to find and share my voice. The story of Helen Keller struggling to understand and communicate with others was an important one for me. Being painfully shy allowed me to relate with her communication struggle, and as I watched her overcome obstacles, I wanted to be like her and overcome my own struggles.  I am grateful for the inner courage she helped me find.

Being in the Moment

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I think the ocean was my first teacher of “be in the present.”  As a child, my family would race to the Atlantic Ocean every summer to meet up with my cousins. There we ate hot dogs dripping with mustard and battled the waves that seemed as tall as skyscrapers. We howled at the stories of green-winged monsters my brother dug from his imagination, and we played Monopoly long past our bedtimes. I can see those memories like a Panavision film in my mind. I remember them vividly because I was there. In the moment. Children are so good at being present.

Over these many years, there was a move. A job. A new husband. Children. Life becomes hurried and fast. We forget how to hold a moment and the magic of it.

In my forties, I took a class on meditation to slow me down. It did. A bit. I liked how it taught me the importance of my breath. Later I read The Miracle of Mindfulness by the master of mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hahn. I wanted to like it, but at that time I could not embrace the thinking. But the message lingered in my mind.

In the book, Nhat Hahn describes his experience decades ago as a young novice monk at Tu Hieu Pagoda where he was assigned daily to wash the dishes for over one hundred monks. Without soap he had to use ashes, rice husks, and coconut husks to clean the dishes. During the winter when the water was freezing cold, he had to heat a big pot of water before he could begin scrubbing. It must have been a Herculean task. But he allowed the experience to be his teacher. He wrote:

“While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on simple things? But that’s precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality.”

The great teacher explained that when his friend Jim came to visit, he asked to do the dishes. Thich Nhat Hahn explained that first Jim needed to learn how to do the dishes. This must have puzzled Jim as it did me. Jim was told by the great monk, “There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.” Jim understood the wisdom in choosing “to wash the dishes to wash the dishes.” But I was baffled.

I was a young mother with two high-energy sons who needed my attention, a husband who was struggling to build a business and days filled with 150 high school students. I could not conceive of spending time “in the moment” with the dishes. I just wanted them clean—and now!

But the wisdom of the monk had seeded in me. While it would take years, his thinking began to make sense. It is important to try and be here fully in what we do. Even when washing the dishes.  Last week at the beach with my grandkids, I relearned this lesson. Two-year-old Evy came up to me. She had been sculpting sandcastles all morning. With joy she handed me a ball of wet, gooey sand. She glowed like her gift was gold.

Without words Evy had communicated the beauty of being in the here and now at the beach. I knew what to do. I tossed my book aside, and I joined her, digging my fingers deep into the gritty sand. Seeing the joy on Evy’s face as I sculpted a new castle with her, I felt the power of being at the beach when you are at the beach. I will try to remember this even when I wash the dishes.

This morning I found my old copy of The Miracle of Mindfulness. In it Thick Nhat Hahn wrote: “If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we . . . are sucked away into the future–and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.”

I am grateful that this idea is taking hold in me. In truth I have always embraced the future and made plans for it. That will never stop being important to me. In writing in my journal, I value being able to reflect on my life and how to make it fuller and richer. But finally, I am making more room for building sandcastles and magical moments.  May we live and celebrate what we have now.

Pretzel

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Pretzel by Jan Adrian

I don’t know if Pretzel rescued me or if I rescued Pretzel.  After breaking up with my partner in the beginning of a pandemic, I was suddenly alone.  As a cat lover, I had cats most of my life, but had not replaced the last two who died 7 years ago. I had been traveling so much that another cat didn’t make sense. Then the pandemic hit. Since I wouldn’t be traveling as much, another cat seemed like a good idea.

I made an appointment at Happy Tails sanctuary, picked out three potential adoptees from their website, and went to meet them.  The first one was totally blah. Just lay there while I tried to make contact.

Pretzel was the second one I met. She was in a room with about five other cats. When I went in and sat on a chair, she was on my lap within two minutes, wanting to be petted, and purring. No need to meet the third cat.

Her paperwork said she was nine years old, didn’t like children or other pets, and was needy.  She sounded perfect for me. But what really sold me was her stunning beauty, her baby blue eyes, and her silky fur. I took her home with me.

Pretzel was a very verbal cat. She complained when I put her into a cage, a car, and then a new environment. But I marveled at how adaptable she was. Unless I take the perspective of our souls and imagine that we chose each other before coming into this world, she had no choice about coming home with me.

She was the eleventh cat I’ve had in my lifetime. We lived together for two years, and I often told her she was my favorite. She came when I called (not a characteristic cat behavior).  When she wanted me to pay more attention to her, she gently stroked my arm with her little paw. She often sat on my lap and purred.  When I returned home after being gone a few hours, she enthusiastically greeted me, and gave me someone to come home to.  I loved Pretzel.

About 6 months ago, Pretzel had a sore on her underside that kept bleeding and didn’t heal. The vet called it a mass and recommended surgery.  One thousand dollars later, the vet had removed two masses from the mammary chain, and a biopsy said they were malignant.  Breast cancer. She thought she got all the cancer in the surgery, but of course didn’t know if other cancer cells were in Pretzel’s body. The vet said it usually takes about six months for cancer to progress, and I should watch for other lumps.

The surgery recovery process was very sweet. Pretzel and I bonded. The first two weeks she was caged in a large wire cage to keep her from walking around and exerting herself. At bedtime the first night, when Pretzel was used to being in bed with me, she frantically tried climbing up the side of the cage to get to me.  Instead of reading in bed like I usually did, I sat on the floor next to her cage and read out loud to her. It seemed to comfort her, and she settled down. This became our nightly routine for those two weeks.

She wore a cone for six weeks to keep her from licking the surgery site. She hated it. Instead of hiding in a corner like cats do when they don’t feel good, she started hanging around me even more. Since she couldn’t scratch her head in the cone, she begged me to scratch it as much as I could tolerate. We bonded even more during that difficult time.

Eventually her surgery wounds healed, the cone came off, and we went back to normal.

Then two weeks ago, Pretzel stopped eating and clearly didn’t feel well. An Xray showed tumors in her chest. Even though we didn’t do a biopsy, the vet said Pretzel had breast cancer, and it had metastasized to her lungs. This is the same diagnosis I am dealing with. What are the chances?

Steroids helped Pretzel feel better and eat a little, but she was no longer her old self. She hung around as close to me as she could get. I felt I loved her even more. Is that possible?

The vet said he could refer her to an oncologist, but in his experience, treatment would not be useful at this point, and I would put Pretzel through a lot of discomfort.  Not something I would choose for her. I knew our time would be short.

I have since heard that it isn’t uncommon for a pet to have the same diagnosis as her owner. Some people theorize that pets take on the disease to help out an owner they love. I don’t know if I believe that, and there is no way to prove it one way or the other. But the idea made me wonder.

What I do know is that my relationship with Pretzel demonstrates the saying I have heard, “If you want to feel love, look for beauty.” Every time I looked at Pretzel, I saw her beauty and my heart was full of love.

Just ten days after starting on the steroids, Pretzel was not eating. She declined rapidly, no longer spending time on my bed with me. She hid in the guest bedroom where she could be alone. I sat in there with her and watched as she changed positions frequently, not able to get comfortable.

She was suffering. Her life was in my hands, and I needed to help her forward. It’s often referred to as the Rainbow Bridge or Kitty Heaven.

Although her time in a body was over, it seemed her spirit remained with me. For such a small being, seven pounds, her absence left a huge hole in my life. Now my house feels empty.

I am grieving her loss, an indication of the love I feel. Grief and love are two sides of the same coin. We can’t have one without the other.  We only grieve what we have loved, and every love will end in loss.  I am so grateful for the time we had together and for the love we shared. I am grateful that Pretzel chose me.