Chronicling a friendship

Soon after my friend Cissy died, her brother Richard gave me a pile of photos he had found among her things that capture some of the good times we had together, now more precious than ever.
     I flipped through them at the time and decided to put them in an album at a later date, when it wasn’t so painful. Yesterday was the day.
     There are multiple shots taken at her famous annual Derby parties – some with me and my late husband Jim, at least one with Rick and some with just Cissy and me. We are younger and older, thinner and fatter, my hair is long and frizzy or short and banged, but they all have one thing in common: Everyone is smiling.
     There’s the comforting shot of Cissy, me and our friend Beth Lovering, taken when the three of us spent a weekend in Ogunquit, Maine, as we stood in front of a municipal garbage pail with the word “forgiveness” inexplicably stamped on the metal.
     But by far the most are from our many camping trips Cissy and I took together – at a remote site on Lake Umbagog, for one, but most at a campground on Orrs Island, Maine, where we would slip away for a traditional lobster, clam and hot dog feast on “Moby Deck” (which, of course, we called something more irreverent) at a Bailey Island restaurant.
     There are none from our last camping trip, which took place last summer at Pawtuckaway State Park in New Hampshire, and which held some moments of sadness. Cissy, struggling with severe arthritis, had difficulty navigating her inflatable kayak and announced at the end of our short paddle that it was probably the last time she would use it. Little did we know what those words portended.
     I am reminded of a striking line from the wonderful movie “Boys on the Side” where a central character, having experienced a loss, says, “You never know the last time you sleep with somebody it's the last time.”
     You never know the last time you camp with someone it’s the last time. Or the last time you have dinner. Or the last time you have a casual conversation on the phone.
     Would we want to know? Would it make those last encounters even sweeter or unbearably sad? Or, somewhere in the back of our minds, do we sense the fragility of the moment anyway?
     I don’t know. But I know that, after looking at photos and remembering good times, friendship never really ends.

Who is Toffee?

When she gets excited or exuberant (like just before her dinner is served), she twirls around in joyful circles like no dog I’ve ever known.
     When she’s puzzled or uncertain, she furrows her brow in a human-looking expression of confusion.
     She can smile a toothy smile.
     She’s the color of a deer – light brown with a little bit of black and bronze along her back.
      Her adoption papers said she was a “shepherd mix” but we see signs of Labrador, coon and maybe even boxer in her looks and demeanor.
     We’ve been dying to know her ancestry.
     So, over the weekend, we took steps to find out. We sent off swabs of DNA (from inside her cheek) to a veterinary lab in Nebraska to find out just who our 10-month-old Toffee really is.
     Answers should arrive in a couple of weeks.
     We’ll keep you posted.

Losing Lisa

I know many people who have battled cancer but few who did it so publicly, and with such determination to help others, as Lisa Kelly Merriam.
     She died Tuesday, just before midnight, and for me it was like a star in the firmament had blinked out, as well. She was such a beacon, even to people like me who have never battled cancer. She wasn’t even 50. A single mom, she leaves a son.
     I didn’t know her well. She was part of a group of breast cancer survivors in Woburn, Mass. called the Tanner Ta Tas – “Tanners” because the city was once host to numerous tanneries and “Ta Tas” because this group still has a sense of humor, regardless of what its members have endured. The Ta Tas were at her side until the end.
     What I remember most about her is the night she appeared at a rally on Woburn Common to kick off breast cancer awareness month last October. She was battling Stage IV cancer that had spread to her brain but she insisted on speaking, even though she had had chemotherapy that very day.
     “Until there’s a cure that works for everyone, we all still have work to do,” she told the crowd.
     Lisa was diagnosed in the spring of 2006, at age 42, and had a full mastectomy five months later. The cancer had already spread and in September she learned she had Stage IV cancer with liver and spleen involvement. She started a regimen that she followed for the rest of her life – regular chemotherapy, PET scans, MRIs and more. In 2008, she had brain surgery. Her husband had filed for divorce months earlier.
     Still, in her profile on the Tanner Ta Ta website, she could say, “I love life and being with people.”
     The Ta Tas are still helping her. They are sponsoring a raffle to help pay her expenses. Raffle tickets are $10 for two tickets to see the Red Sox vs. Yankees, July 7 at 7:15 p.m., Section 9, Box 96, Row QQ, Seats 3 and 4. Checks may be made payable to: Tanner Ta Ta Foundation, 8 Skyview Road, Woburn 01801. Winner will be drawn June 30.
     She would have done the same for anyone in need.
     I plan to keep a photo of her where I can see it regularly. We all need our warrior heroes.

Gladuation

     He’s a kid who never lost his sense of wonder, that quality life seems to beat out of most of us once we hit the age of reason. He’s still curious about almost anything you introduce to him, even at the age of 18.
     He gets lost in his own music – I guess it to be a form of meditation for him – and it makes for some fine notes when he enters that zone.
     He is resolutely kind -- to his elderly grandmother, to a developmentally disabled friend, to anyone I’ve ever seen him near – in a way I wish I could be.  His tenderness toward his mother in her final illness was palpable.
     And he’s absurdly, guilelessly handsome, and this isn’t just a proud aunt talkin’.
     OK, so he’s also sloppy and absent-minded and a little on the dreamy side, but all of us are package deals.
     Now, he’s graduated from high school and I couldn’t be more proud of him or excited about his future. Saturday was his graduation party and I pray the warm, sunny weather we had is just an omen for what lies ahead for him.
     Godspeed, Mr. Gregory. Keep making us proud.

Dream on

What explains our dreams?
     I’m renowned for the intensity and fantasticality of mine, for dreams where I’m trying to in vain reach loves ones who have died and can’t because I’ve lost their phone numbers or the numbers have been disconnected, as well as for the occasional screaming nightmare (indeed, I woke up everyone in the dormitory room at Zealand Falls Hut last weekend yelling for help to get away from a dreamed assailant).
     But some are more Fellini-esque than others.
     I just had one where I was in uncharted territory on a mountainside, where there were deep crevasses and mossy boulders and each step had to be calculated to avoid doom. I was accompanied by a man who seemed to be some sort of guide, who wore a cowboy hat and looked a little like Sam Elliott (be still my heart) and whose name, I swear, was Teachable. But I was also accompanied by a dwarf named Mona who, when we got down from the mountain, took me into a Dunkin’ Donuts and tried to get me more information about safe climbs.
     What can it possibly mean? That even I, at 64, am “teachable” about mountain survival? That short legs are no excuse for not trying? That I should stop eating spicy food before I go to sleep?
     Who knows? Got any ideas or dreams of your own to share, let me know.
     I’m teachable.

Getting "high"

We had trained for weeks, walking up and down the gravel road to the FAA tower near us, carrying loaded packs on our backs, scrambling up a mountain at Pawtuckaway State Park, avoiding elevators and doing anything else we could think of to prepare for a climb to Zealand Falls Hut in the White Mountains.
     This weekend, we did it. Rick and I and two friends – Miriam and Bill – made the climb to a place we’d never been before, a wide-porched hut nestled next to the cascading Zealand Falls at 2,700 feet. We claimed our bunks in the co-ed dormitory-style bunkrooms and headed out again, this time to something called “Zeacliff,” a promontory with some of the most incredible views in the White Mountains, reached by a rocky, vertical path that I wasn’t sure I could finish. It’s also at 3,700 feet, the highest I’ve ever climbed (though wussy by most climbers’ standards).
     En route, we were assaulted by black flies that swarmed around and into our eyes, ears, noses, buzzing and biting unmercifully.
     But oh, when we got there, it was worth every welt.
     There, before us, was a panoramic view of several mountains (including Mt. Washington) standing in proud profile, inviting us outside ourselves and into the broader embrace of the natural world, as a forgiving breeze sang lightly and all the petty concerns of our everyday lives fell away and we were free. We lay on the warm rock, sipped a little cabarnet and rejoiced in the day.
     But that’s not all a “hut night” has to offer. There are eight huts in the White Mountains, all maintained by the AppalachianMountain Club (AMC) and run by crews (or “croos” as they prefer to call themselves) of young people who run up and down mountains every day to carry up food and supplies for guests. They cook fabulous meals (like a full turkey dinner), perform skits for guests’ entertainment, offer advice on trails and information on flora and fauna and generally endear themselves to all.
     We’re already planning another hut adventure.
     There IS something bigger than we are.

About those Celtics knuckle push-ups...

They're not that hard to do, as this video of the 64-year-old virgin shows.
Offensive rebounds are another matter.
Let's hope they get them down before the next match-up in Miami.
Go Celts.

The stroll that wasn't

Pamplona, Spain has its running of the bulls, popularized by Ernest Hemingway, among many others.
     Brattleboro, Vermont has its strolling of the heifers, popularized by no one you ever heard of.
     It’s an annual parade in the quirky border town (bordering New Hampshire, that is), held the first Saturday of June, featuring marching bands, acrobats, cow-themed floats and – yes – people parading their heifers.
     Rick and I set off yesterday morning with every intention of attending this wacky event, to be followed by a party and camping on the 600 acres owned by one of Rick’s friends outside Brattleboro. But there was the little matter of… pouring rain.
     As we drew closer and close to our destination, and the rain came harder and harder, we decided to forget the parade part and just go the party, which we did. Good food, good music, good company. Nevertheless, I was so tired from a grueling week at work, that I left the party at 8:30 and was asleep in the camper by 9.
     But I didn’t want you to miss out on what the parade looks like, so here’s a version from three years ago I stole from UTube.
     Next year, I promise I’ll make my own.

I passed my test!

     I guess this kind of thing happens when you approach 65 – or maybe at any age.
     Occasional palpitations, enough to wake you from your sleep. A feeling that something ain’t right. A Holter monitor result that shows “ST depressions” – meaning that those tidy little spikes you see on a normal EKG sometimes dip below the line, where they shouldn’t.
     It was enough that my physician assistant sent me in for an echo stress test – a treadmill test quickly followed by imagery that shows the condition of your heart.
     It was at 7:30 this morning, after the week from hell at work.
     The cardiologist, who went by the name Sunny, couldn’t have been more reassuring. Everything looked good – plenty of elasticity, no blockages. I felt great hearing the news.
     But not as great as I felt the night before when Rick, knowing my apprehension, said that no matter what happened the next morning, “You have a good heart.”
     I’m so lucky.