An improvised life

Thank you, friends and family near and far, for your expressions of caring and concern over the past weeks. I am feeling much better physically though I am still on multiple drugs, semi-bedrest and my self-prescribed anti-inflammation diet. It would be useful to know which of these tortures is/are the key to my heart sac’s happiness – but I don’t want to find out the hard way, so clean eating, continued slothfulness, and a slow tapering of my medications is on order.   Shortly after posting my last missive, I came across something I wrote a year ago that, oddly enough, seemed to presage the theme of my most recent post. I guess I have been grappling for some time with this notion of when and how we show weakness. With that I will share this little ski-season story-within-a-story that I wrote last year... -- The chairlift lurched to a stop shortly after Alder and I got on. We dangled in the air for an uncomfortably long time and I began to regret getting on the lift. We’d b...

As most of you know, Alder and I relocated to Arlington, Massachusetts at the end of the summer to join Rosie for her last years of high school. After 23 years in Alaska – and frankly never having resonated with this place – it’s a big transition. I decided to combat my sense of dislocation by running the Boston Marathon. Brilliant, I know! It accomplished all kinds of good: (1) help others – check! – by running as a fundraiser for The Children’s Room; [1] (2) reclaim my health and confidence and kick cancers’ ass(es?) – check!; and (3) do something epic that’s endemic to the area – Boston Marathon totally checks that box! Finally, I figured I would model grit and perseverance for my children. Instead I am modeling hospital gowns. I am modeling defeat. I am modeling fatigue and despair. I am modeling Becoming One With The Couch. Training was going ok. I wasn’t feeling my strength flooding back as I used to when I would ramp up my running, but I was able to push through an...