THE FEAR AND THE REPOSE; A YEAR IN ALIQUIPPA, A MEMOIR

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THE FEAR AND THE REPOSE; A YEAR IN ALIQUIPPA, A MEMOIR

. . .

"A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. Amid the disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on people, fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. It stopped but I could not tell what it was." Job 4:12

ONE

The Baby Will Be Fine …
In the summer of 1991 a word persisted in my thoughts, an unfamiliar word that had no context nor history in my 28 years. I was pregnant and it unnerved me that a word like 'lymphoma,' which never before had been part of my lexicon, hovered nearby, a sneaky stranger. Was the presence of the word alone enough to wreak havoc on my family?

By breaking apart its component parts I recognized 'lymphoma' a disease word. In 1991 we had no Google to google it and I had no energy to drag the girls to the library, so I feared it in secret.

Looking back I think the word a premonition but back then I feared its mere presence in my head enough to incite the reality of it. Words are powerful.

And not that I supposed every word that repeated in my head (like song lyrics do) were premonition. I am not given to being superstitious. Some words danced there because of their lyrical nature. Like 'Fanny Hermann Boote.' Though its repetitive presence was annoying I knew why it remained; her name is poetic, like the first line of a haiku.

But disease/malady words are different from lyrical words. For years after my experience becoming acquainted with lymphoma, I felt dread and anxiety when a disease/malady word bubbled around my head. Rheumatoid arthritis punctuated my thoughts for a while, also root canal and typhoid at other times. Before I could discern between premonition and dysfunction I feared their power, dreaded their arrival and hated their meanings.

You Take Prenatals and Pray A Lot . . .

It was in the hot summer of 1991 that I was in the final trimester of pregnancy with our third child. Steven and I and our two young daughters had recently moved to Aliquippa, a small town in western Pennsylvania where the doctor at the free clinic asked, “when’s the last time you felt a kick?” Pitifully, I couldn't recall.

I’d made the appointment because my feet, hands and back were burning with a deep itch. I was tired and brain-fogged and was losing instead of gaining weight.
“Maybe a little flutter?” I guessed. “Maybe this morning?”

The exam continued with a cold stethoscope against my skin listening for fetal noises. “I’m ordering an ultrasound,” he said, “and an HIV screening,” meaning the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that was still relatively newly known, and known to spread through direct contact with bodily fluids. He asked about number of sexual partners and intravenous drug use and then I offered my arm to the phlebotomist accepting the screening as one more in the many tests of pregnancy.

. . .
Each day of summer 1991 I interacted in fractions with Anne almost four and Noelle almost two who awoke in leaps of wonder and joy, eating, hiding, dancing before sunlight rolled in from over Pennsylvania hills. Each day the girls were masses of motion while I was wilted and tried to make myself just pick up that spilled cup, to be alert enough to keep them from hurting each other and themselves. I drug through each day hoping this day would be an improvement over the one before.

A year ago when we lived in Pittsburgh my energy matched the girls’ as we made regular visits to the Carnegie Museums, Toy Lending Library, Phipps Conservatory, Schenley Park. Twelve months ago we went three times a week to church, attended weekly appointments with play group, Mom's Day Out and preschool. Pittsburgh was wondrously fun with toddlers.

Our days were spent learning that acorns fall down from oaks, butterflies flutter up, that a river is blue or brown and green, that it reflects sky and trees and it flows fast and deep and that the swirls swirl because of dangerous currents in the deep water. We learned that the reassembled holotype of Tyrannosaurus rex at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History far too real and terrifying to get close to (and so left without getting past the rotunda, returning a year later). We observed wonders as we laid down and as we rose up, about a world where there is both danger and beauty.

. . .
An antidote...

It was a motionless day when a voice with a calming message came to me, two months into our new home, an ordinary day, when a hazy sky was hiding the sun, when saturated air was trying to breeze, when I was finding it hard to breathe and finding it hard to feel the baby’s movements. The loud voice with a quieting message.
In all its silence and strength the message was simple and lasted probably three seconds (though its benevolence was far reaching.) The voice did not come in the quiet of night, as some are wont to do, but in the middle of an ordinary day, its brevity sandwiched between a request for popsicles from the girls and a Rolaids commercial on the TV.
Before it consumed and muted all sound it first absorbed the girl’s chatter, then the whir of summer fans, the banter of baseball.
Bypassing my ears altogether, as if the measured words flowed directly into my brain by way of an intravenous drip, I heard: The baby will be fine... ending with an ellipsis, perhaps dispatching more words I could not catch.
I wanted more from the voice. I want to know, will I too be fine? To make a convincing plea that I was needed by my family. I need to take care of them.
But I heard nothing about any of that.
Instead sounds of the day returned to the common decibel, the banter of baseball, the whir of fans, the chatter of toddlers.
It might seem a dreadful experience to lose sound while hearing a loud voice that no one else hears. To receive what feels like a partial message, to not be able to ask a question in response or reveal it to anyone. But I found it a balm, a refreshment to my soul, an antidote to a lingering foreboding that I could not explain.

. . .
The ultrasound confirmed the baby was fine. In this remarkable view beneath protective layers of flesh and muscle, into the cocoon of a womb, we saw that our child was a boy, who moved and stretched and was growing as expected. My itchy palms, feet and back could be attributed to hormonal changes and though my lack of weight gain caused the doctor pause, he reminded me that weight gain can be negatively affected by a hot summer chasing toddlers. I’d had two successful births, I reasoned, and had always been hearty. I will be fine too, I assured myself, the voice who offered nothing regarding my status.

At night when the kids were tucked in, after we had prayed, when the house was quiet, when deep sleep was elusive in the dark hours of the night, I tried to subsume that battering word by hearing again the comforting ones, the baby will be fine, those good words. Lymphoma, a word without context, without meaning, repeating, repeating, repeating like an ellipsis working hard to fill in the places where words should be.
In this world where life is dangerous and beautiful, where surety comes in a microburst, where fret might be warranted, you want the science of medicine to merge with the plausibility of unconscious knowledge. You want to introduce the physician to the voice. You want the one who understands your body, who gathers blood and data to partner with the one who takes no exchange of blood, who gathers words and prayers. You want to tell them both about the word that sighs and groans.

I want to ask, can you surgically remove or exorcize this word lymphoma so that any power it possesses by being in my head will spare my family? I want my question to be taken seriously, the foreboding I can not explain.
In a perfect world the physician and the voice consult together. They do not laugh about you in the staff lounge. They settle the word that hovers like so many distractions. But this is not a perfect world, so you take your prenatals and pray a lot.

Pittsburgh 1988 .. .
Steven, baby Anne and I had moved to Pittsburgh in 1988, a family of three, choosing the University of Pittsburgh School of Law over a dozen other law schools that had accepted my husband. We drove a 1973 sky blue Mercury Comet with rusted passenger-side floorboards. This was Steven’s college car still sporting its “THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY” decal proud in the back window, a car with many years of run left. Before we had Anne I’d grumbled about the intake of water through the floorboard, but when we buckled her car seat into the back seat, it wasn't water that affected her but exhaust. We started talking about purchasing another car.
We rented a two bedroom 90-year old brick row-house in Greenfield, a neighborhood in Pittsburgh on a high hill that overlooked miles of city, a two mile walk to campus.

At the upstairs window we’d hold baby Anne and watch fireworks booming from Three Rivers Stadium in downtown Pittsburgh. The booms were too much for a little girl. And even though the booms were followed by very exciting bursts of lights, waiting for the colors and sparkles required patience she couldn’t manage in the presence of thunderous booms. Though it’s benign with a pretty ending, it requires time and maturity to differentiate between the boom and the light, the fear and the repose. It’s difficult to expose yourself to something frightful even if you're pretty sure there's a good ending.

Our neighbor Bob who worked as a groundskeeper at Three Rivers Stadium passed baseball tickets along to us. At the ballgames Anne learned to enjoy the loud fun of fireworks and cheering crowds, wearing her Pittsburgh Pirates dress. We’d photograph her with Pirate Parrot, her bright blonde smile catching the attention of stadium photographers, her smile flashing high up on the stadium big screen.

Halfway through the three years of law school, during a record-breaking deepfreeze, Noelle was born. Steven brought us a bouquet of flowers that flash-froze during his walk to the hospital. The next day Pittsburgh halted in what should have been high bustle. Silent streets, silent skies. Even the gray clouds seemed frozen. Ice floes on The Monongahela River out my window formed into weird shapes like headstones and stalagmites and the only movement I could discern from the normally active cityscape were steam vapors lifting from beneath streets and sidewalks.

Before Noelle’s birth we had purchased a Chrysler “K-Car,” but when time came to bring her home, like every car, bus and cab in Pittsburgh, the K-Car wouldn't crank. I used to gaze down from our row-house at its shiny red squareness, but now chemical processes inside the battery wouldn’t hold a charge, or it was the fuel system, starter motor, alternator. With wind chill the temperature hovered at 60 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and though none of Pittsburgh could start their cars, Bob had been out and about in his Chrysler and transported us home. We spent the next week barricaded against the cold, watching Noelle through Anne’s eyes, the wholeness of a family of four.

Why would Bob’s car start while the rest of Pittsburgh was paralyzed? Bob was that neighbor every family needs. It seemed like he was always lucky. But if luck is the residue of design, in truth, he worked at making things happen. He didn’t shy away from motion and intentionality, like talking with people, learning names, hopes, dreams and gripes. He was like a good hearted politician.

For instance, one afternoon when we were newly moved in he came to our front door unannounced. He introduced himself, welcomed us to the neighborhood and then hearing the static of a baseball game coming from the AM dial of the radio, asked, “are you listening to a game?” He was appalled in his pleasant teasing way. “I have a TV set in my bedroom,” he said, “who needs a TV in the bedroom?”

Shortly he returned with a 50 pound 19 inch television and apologized that it didn't have a remote control. In fact it was too old to have a remote control, a product of the days when television viewing required physical participation, when you had to stand, walk and turn the dial to watch a different show. Soon Anne and eventually Noelle mastered use of opposable digits, developing finger strength to change the channels for us. This humble act allowed Steven and me to settle deeper into the cushions of the couch.

Bob seemed to know everyone in town, referring to state senators, trash collectors and professional baseball players by first name and like best friends. But this wasn’t because he was like Forrest Gump who attributed his life to luck, but because he took a keen interest in people, their plights, their striving. Each new story that Bob encountered was a way to understand the world, to examine it like a multifaceted gem. Luck is the residue of design to which Bob was an intentional practitioner. He was as genuinely excited to meet Noelle as he was to meet Bobby Bonilla, Andy VanSlyke or Ronald Reagan. Folks were drawn to Bob as Bob was drawn to them.

Noelle, meaning ‘born at Christmas time,’ our long skinny unquiet child, made for the sweetest of Christmases. Not knowing who we would bring home, a boy or a girl, a Noel or a Noelle, I had decorated the old bricked-in fireplace with the 90 year old mantle with four generic stockings and pine boughs with twinkly lights woven through. In the small space that was our living room, the small fresh tree stood next to the fireplace decorated with sparkling lights and shining ornaments, wrapped packages at its base. Of the opinion that beauty and celebration were attributes of peace and shalom, of the warmth and the heady aromas of baking, we were ready and prepared for a Noel or a Noelle, okay that the tree was not laden with packages, relieved to meet our child, safe and healthy.

Noelle was long and skinny at birth, flipping like a worm for the nurses who bathed her. She had a head of light peach fuzz and a whirlpool of a cow-lick at her forehead. Her due date was December 27 and our friends congratulated us on the “perfect timing” of having a child during a long Christmas break from school, as if couples can make plans with such ease. But she came seven days early, before law school wrapped up for Christmas break. Steven had taken all but one exam, this one a take-home final due in twelve hours, an exam given by a professor for whom Steven was a graduate assistant. I urged him to ask for an extension. But extensions were not granted, he told me, a non-negotiable rule drilled into every first year law student.

As preparation we had arranged for a law school buddy to come over. Henry would be studying through the night and assured us that he could study while Anne slept. The next day neighbor Linda was prepared to retrieve Anne when she woke.
Anne was not a shy child. She delighted in stretching her chubby arms to be held by strangers. Often this was while standing in line at the bank or post office. She wanted to feel the textures of hair, to touch different colors of skin. The less someone looked like her white skinned, blue eyed parents, the more she wanted to be held by them. So when she awoke to Henry and was routed to Linda’s it was without consternation. New people weren’t scary like booms that couldn’t be properly scrutinized. New faces were like art to her, to be stared at and touched, to labor over with care.

Around the last hours of Tuesday night I was reluctant to tell Steven that the contractions were regular and heavy. He was typing and referring to pages of hand scribbled notes, frantic to finish. But when my water broke his typing stopped, the exam ended forever partially finished. Henry rushed over and Steven grabbed my packed bag. I had written instructions for Henry including any pertinent phone number. Next morning Linda, who had never met Henry, was ready. Her daughters were thrilled to have a little playmate and they fed Anne breakfast and lunch before Steven retrieved her that afternoon. It was well planned and well executed.

Preferring to plan ahead, I didn’t like surprises, to think about all eventualities. Still, I never could have orchestrated in advance good folks like Henry and our neighbors. This is something you don’t plan, but like Bob, you allow yourself to be open to others, to being a friend, to gifting your bedroom TV, learning names. Reaching out like Anne to learn the texture of hair, the color of skin, to learn something about the fabric of life, introducing strangers to each other by the commonality of laughter. You don’t become a neighbor for what they can do for you, but at times being a neighbor distills down to this, that reciprocity is sometimes one sided and folks step in to help with the big stuff when you have nothing in return to give. It’s what neighbors do. It would be years before we would be that family who could help with big-sized needs.

. ..
Anne loved Noelle in the untamed ways of a two year old. She wanted to share a sippy cup, a cardboard book, crumpled wrapping paper. She wanted to hold her baby sister, and be held by her, crawling onto Noelle as if she wasn’t four days old. I’d run out of film in my camera, so like Mary, treasured moments in my heart.

Soon Noelle mastered breastfeeding and often we napped together in a rocker or I'd awaken in the middle of the night surprised that her little self was beside me in bed. I knew it wasn’t wise to sleep alongside a newborn but how do you prevent muscle memory from sleepwalking a crying infant into bed? I’d awaken and there she’d be.

The girls shared a room, but Anne rarely was awakened by Noelle. Anne was spending more time with her daddy, watching sports, drawing in his books, on his school notes. She learned early that in sports there’s lots of numbers eventually translating that into math problems to be solved. She enjoyed the game of figuring things out.

She was our first and was born in Juneau Alaska. There Steven worked three part time jobs. We knew no one in our neighborhood, a tightly packed and neatly ordered trailer-home park in the shadow of Thunder Mountain. It was a 40 minute walk to Mendenhall Glacier and an hour’s drive to “the end of the road” where Egan Drive ended at the foot of a mountain.

Juneau is where I learned to appreciate the bright yellow of the dandelion, the first shock of spring color after a long gray winter. It’s where I learned that an entire city closes down for a sunny day; government, schools, small businesses, all closed down and folks took to the bike paths and parks, crowded from first light of day to the last light of day, where no bit of unclouded sunlight was wasted.

“The ancient rainforest,” Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass, is a “spread from Northern California to southeastern Alaska in a band between the mountains and the sea … [it’s] where the fog drips.” Juneau, Alaska’s capital city, hugs the Gastineau Channel and is where the fog will rain or it will freeze, always present, where children play ball games wearing no special rain garments, tee shirts and boots are typical, noticing no dripping fog or fogging drips. Beautiful because of this climate, but adored when the sun breaks through, “Here is where the moisture-laden air from the Pacific rises against the mountains to produce upward of one hundred inches of rain a year, watering an ecosystem rivaled nowhere else on earth,” this special place where our first child was born.

A sunny day was an unusual event because it meant no rain, drizzle, or dripping fog, common for the other 300 days of the year. It’s where when the northern lights were active a phone tree took effect as an alert. No matter the time of night, the phone on the wall rang and we’d bundle against the sharp glacial air and race out to gaze into the heavens, the dancing lights rejoicing to a tune we couldn’t hear.

. ..
It was a full moon and the icy waters of the Gastineau Channel were lapping over Glacier Highway the dark afternoon we drove to the birthing center. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving and I was anxious about being in labor and having a baby. I wasn't sure if I was having Braxton-Hicks or real contractions, and wasn’t sure if my water broke, so Dr Ngyuen, my obstetrician, met us at the birthing center and decided to induce labor. She used reasoning I didn’t follow and that I didn’t question, and so began hours of pitocin induced labor.

I had been determined to have only a natural birth with no pain killers, having been a rugged type and unafraid of discomfort or pain. But the unexpected addition of pitocin brought more powerful contractions than I thought I could bear. I labored through it unmedicated and after intense hours was rewarded with Anne, a blue-eyed wonder who lost no time scrutinizing the room, the nurses, and her daddy’s face.

. . .
I was eight years old when I became the only female and the only child in my dad's Goju-Ryu style dojo. It was 1971 and my dad, my sensei, (teacher) was a former marine who served in the Korean War where almost 40,000 Americans died in action, where nearly 100,000 were wounded. My dad served north of the “38th parallel,” shorthand for bloody hand to hand combat, in a brutally cold winter in North Korea. My dad with shrapnel and nightmares from that winter, was a sandan (third-degree black belt). He taught a class full of Vietnam vets, gentle and hardened like Goju-Ryu itself.

My dad, who had received two purple hearts, was drawn to Goju-Ryu style of karate because though it presumed violence it also presumed peace. Students didn’t stay long in Goju-Ryu style karate if they were in it “for its destructive powers,” instructor and author Norimi Gosei Yamaguchi wrote in 1974. Though Dad knew violence as a reality of life, he never would abide by violence for its own sake. Violence was a partial reality, he said, the other was peace. (Goju-Ryu Karate II by Yamaguchi, N. Gosei)

After I had learned kihon ido, basic patterns, Sensei outsourced the beginner class to me. It was 1972. I was nine years old. Body bags were on the nightly news. We were hardened to killings at Kent State, the deaths of MLK jr, Malcom X, Bobby Kennedy shot dead. Everywhere was violence including in the recent memories of the beginning students who, like my dad, were hardened to combat and conflict, bloody losses of life, fresh shrapnel in their bodies.

My dad understood their struggles, their mental and physical suffering, the shrapnel lodged in his leg was hidden proof, a wound he never spoke of. His was a dogo that was both “soft” and “hard,” the open hand of peace, the closed fist of attack. Ultimately Goju-Ryu is the tension between peace and conflict. On the sparring mat there’s a bow of respect before a beautifully placed seiken-zuki chudan, square knuckle punch to the opponent’s solar plexus. It’s the involuntary “oof” from the impact to the gut. It’s a blocked side snap kick, a bruised forearm, an opponent falling to the mat. But always, always, when the match was called, adversaries bowed to each other and shook hands in respect and peace.

Though “violence exists as a natural part of the world and the martial arts are no exception to this rule,” Sensei Yamaguchi wrote, “subsequent generations must not learn to uncontrollably vent violence through karate.” As an Anishinaabe elder says, “see the dark, recognize its power, but do not feed it.”

Veterans newly home from Vietnam soaked up the philosophy of Goju-Ryu. Hard, soft, brutal and peaceful. My dad, a student of Sensei Yamaguchi, was the toughest of opponents. I would watch with amusement at the new members of the class who thought they could handle the 40 year old teacher with a slight paunch. But he was swift to issue a front snap kick or a solid punch, punctuated with his standard kiai, always a surprise, a terrifying guttural yell, an art form of its own. But he also was ready to absorb a strike with a congratulatory grin, a full smile if beautifully executed. And though violence was pro forma so was peace, he taught, the absence of conflict. And not just peace, but shalom, not just the absence of violence but the manifestation of harmony, prosperity, tranquility. Ultimately this was the teaching in Sensei’s dojo.

For four formative years hard physical training is what I knew. The young war vets, my dad and I trained together, two hour workouts three times a week. I sweated alongside them, performed their military informed sit-ups, push-ups, leg lifts. Though I was expected to participate in every exercise, work out and sparring match, Sensei exempted me only from push ups on my knuckles.

Still, I had my share of bruises, bloody knuckles and getting the wind knocked out of me. By the time I was 10 years old I had “six-pack abs.” I was powerful and fearless so through my teens I translated self discipline and physicality into other sports like diving, uneven bars in gymnastics and the ballet training I had always wanted. At 18 years old I hiked hundreds of miles through the Grand Canyon National Park, from east to west, north to south, often carrying a 50 pound backpack. Testing my body, forcing it further, higher, longer, fearless, invincible.