Finger in the Blender

A finger, an absent mind, and a long history met on the sharp blade of a blender. If you know what an immersion blender is you might think me a little less stupid. And, as I said, I can’t blame my mind as it wasn’t involved in the incident. It was the pure non-thinking mind, the kind I try to reach in meditation, that managed to take over in what seemed at the time to be a very inopportune moment. It was a mind devoid of thought that had me stick my finger in to the small area around the blade to push out the black beans that had gathered there, just having finished pureeing a huge pot of soup. Blood was gushing from my finger as I dropped the blender having pressed the on button inadvertently while my digit was still cleaning out the beans. I could see the nail was sliced in half and there was a gash below the edge of the cuticle, but with all the blood I couldn’t tell if my finger was still intact.

It’s funny what happens in my brain when my body is in trouble. I appeared calm on the outside. Beyond a spastic yelp when it first happened, I was silent as I made my way to the sink, turned it on and ran water over my torn up fingertip. Wild thoughts were running fast through my mind: “Oh God, I have chopped off the end of my finger! I’m going to have emergency surgery!” But as I stared at the mass of bleeding flesh under the faucet, I realized it was just a deep cut. The question of whether it would warrant stitches remained, but that determination could wait. I was leaning on the edge of the sink with all my weight on my forearms, which felt like they were glued to the sleek black countertop. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I eventually stopped rinsing and pinched my finger back together with the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. I held it hard to stop the bleeding. Good thinking.

“Does it hurt?” Grace wanted to know. She was standing beside me having witnessed the event, and her question brought my focus to her and my nerve endings, both for the first time. The shock was making my brain operate like an internet connection that is weak and slow. My awareness finally landed on the fact that she was frightened. Her eyes were full of tears and she was gripping my other arm hard with both hands. I was barely keeping it together so I had no resources to calm her down, other than staying so myself. The cogs turned back to the tip of my left index finger. Quickly and evenly as an ocean wave, the pain rolled in. I realized yes, it was hurting more every second. “No it doesn’t really hurt,” came out in response.

It’s completely automatic for mothers to lie in order to reassure a child and it made perfect sense to me, in that moment, to do so. I added calmly, slowly, “Grace, can you please get Yoly?” She ran at lightening speed to the next room where Yoly, our babysitter, was reading to Frances, yelling: “Mom cut herself and it’s bleeding really bad! Come quick!” Yoly appeared at my side with her composure in tact and I asked her to get me some gauze to wrap around the cut. While I waited I started to feel dizzy. I realized my legs were getting too weak to support the rest of me and I started for the couch, unsure if I would reach it before collapsing.

By the time I got to it, I felt a thick fuzz coming over my whole sensory system. The room was closing in, I heard only the sound of my heart, I felt nausea and tingling and a wave of heat that made my hair wet around the edge of my scalp. I closed my eyes to relieve the dizziness and with hindsight I know I felt the way one feels just before a faint, but in that moment all I felt was sheer panic: “I am not going to make it! This is really, really bad! How could this happen?” Yet hovering above and overriding the chaotic thoughts was a sense of deep peace. It was a wordless feeling of serenity that had me sit there, still and with eyes closed, knowing I would be all right. That there was nothing to do but wait.

It was beginning to dawn on me that I had been here before. About fifteen years ago while watching a particularly gruesome scene in an episode of X-Files where evil aliens were cutting in to someone’s body to harvest organs, I started feeling the same waves of dizziness and black out. I had rushed out of my house and into the backyard to get fresh air. It took about thirty minutes before I felt normal again.

That was my first and worst panic attack, but it was not the last. For about a year I had them, all brought on by images of skin opening up. It didn’t have to be mine, it could be any picture of a cut. Eventually, and with a little help from a therapist, I worked it back to an incident when I was ten. My mother had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and I watched her get upset when her incision opened up a week after her mastectomy. I have recently been writing about this event and not ten minutes before cutting my finger, I was reading my mother’s own account of the very same incident, which did not include my memory of watching her. In her version, I wasn’t there.

Back on the couch, I am beginning to recover and Grace is sitting next to me getting hysterical. Since the moment I dropped the blender, she has been expressing my panic perfectly so that I don’t have to. Frances is there too but she has taken on the role of nursemaid. She is holding out a Band-aid. She has taken off the wrapping and the little white tabs and is ready to put it on the finger which I have still not looked at since the bleeding stopped. I am starting to feel better. The layers are gluing back together. But I don’t want to take any chances looking at it, so I ask Yoly to examine it. My nail had apparently protected my flesh from being cut at the top part of the finger and then the blade had come around again making only a single gash which was pretty deep but short in length. No stitches, we decided. I was lucky.

It was a perfect little storm of emotional and physical pain, designed to pull me forward, or back, or both. The way everything lined up to remind me that that moment when I was ten years old is still with me. Some pretty strong strings are still tied back to that scene. My mother sitting on the edge of her bed looking at her wound, the stitches recently removed and now opening up. Her fear. Her panic. I felt them, but I absorbed the feelings as hers, not mine. Just like Grace expressed the panic I was working hard to contain. I wonder what Grace will remember. I only remember feeling numb.

When I was thirty five, I had a lump removed from my left breast, the same side my mother's breast was removed from. Immediately after my minor surgery, I collapsed outside the OR, suddenly feeling the enormous toll of watching her sit there, terrified of what was happening. In a hospital waiting room in Westwood California, twenty five years later, I finally felt it.

Now here, with a band-aid (thank you Frances) on my finger and the recognition that this was no “accident”, I will paraphrase something I recently heard Patti Smith say in a radio interview: That time does not heal all wounds. You just get to know them better. And eventually, they become your friends.

How to Build a Fire

I know how to build a fire
First you gather your wood
You need logs that are split and dried
And you need kindling
And some balled up newspaper or leaves

Kindling is small pieces of fuel that burn easily
It can be small sticks and twigs
Broken up pieces of lumber
Pine cones or bark
Even cardboard or cloth if you’re desperate

Then you make a structure
A teepee is nice
But depending on what you’ve got
You might make a lean-to
Or even a log cabin

You go from small to big
Putting paper or leaves at the center
Adding the smallest pieces on top of that
Ending with the larger pieces
Making sure there is plenty of space for air

I hold off
From adding a log
Until I get a good little fire going
And start to see some embers that will last
Otherwise the log might put it out

You need plenty of matches
And when you start to light it
Catch the paper at the center on fire
Use your lungs to blow the flames
And keep lighting, if it dies down

You need patience
You keep blowing
You take care of it the way you would a tiny green sprout
Watching the embers
Blowing them into flames

Once you’ve got flames
(That are not just burning paper)
It is time to add a log
Start small and make sure
Not to smother the fire

You always lean your logs
So they are somewhat vertical
So the air can move underneath
Flames rise up
So you put the fuel on top

Then you sit back and watch
Making sure the flames don’t die
And when they do go down some
(This is my favorite part)
You poke the coals or move the logs or add more fuel

The flames will start back up
Building a fire is like a lot of things
It requires attention
A lot of love
And a little patience

Tarantula Speed

Two days ago, as the sun was edging toward the horizon and I was hiking along a beautiful trail in Joshua Tree National Monument, I met a tarantula on the path. Like a good hiker, I pretty much always keep my eyes on the ground ahead of me so I saw this wild creature well before coming too close. He/she was black, hairy of course, and about seven inches in length. I have never seen one out and about before, just in the glass cases at the zoo or the nature center in Eaton Canyon near our house. In captivity they sit pretty still, looking depressed. This one was walking down the path just the same as me, except a lot slower. I never knew tarantulas moved so slowly. His/her movement was constant, deliberate and sloth-like. Watching him was a little like waiting for honey to drop out of a squeeze bottle. Some part of me wanted it to go faster.

My tendency, or habit I guess, is to rush along. And that's what I was doing when I saw him. I was hustling to get back to the car before dark, even though I had plenty of time. It seems like I am always hustling to get to the the next thing or place, when I don't really need to. I used to always be late, so that made me rush, but now that I am usually on time, I still rush to make sure I am there on time. Pretty ridiculous, I know. My daughter Grace gets mad at me when I rush her out the door saying, "we'll be late!" and then we get there ten minutes early.

This afternoon I was rushing through my bedroom with several items in my hands, the way I often do, in a mode of "doing" and "picking up." Frances was in there playing with the cat and she started heading towards me. I was moving so fast (for no reason at all mind you) that I tripped on the edge of the rug and fell, taking Frances down with me. It was such a surprise to lose my balance and fall, not just to my knees, but all the way down, that I let out a strange sort of half yell/scream. Frances was just as surprised as I was and we just sat there stunned for a moment. Luckily we were both okay and thought it was funny. I had twisted my ankle a little and Frances had banged her knee so we just sat on the floor, not moving at all. I thought of the tarantula, and that nice, slow, sure-footed pace. What a good teacher for me.

Rawnt

On the way to go out to dinner Frances, from the backseat asks, “Mommie? What’s a rawnt?”
“Rawnt?”
“Yeah. Rawnt”
"Do you mean 'Rant?'"
"No. Rawnt."
“I don’t know sweetie. What IS a rawnt?”
“I don’t know” she says quietly.

“Well where did you hear it? Did someone say it to you today?”
Silence. Grace tries to help. “Do you mean ‘want’ Frances?” she asks.
“No,” Frances laughs.
It starts to get silly. I ask, “Is it like, ‘Mom, I really rawnt to go to California Pizza Kitchen?’”
“Nooooo!” she says giggling. Grace is laughing too. “Frances: Is it like , “I really rawnt a lollipop?”
“Nooo!!!” Frances says laughing harder. We are all laughing and making more rawnt jokes until we run out of steam and the car is quiet again.

“Mama?”
“Yes”
“What do we do at a restaurant?”
“We eat and relax and talk.”
“Do we rest?”
“Yes...”
“So when do we rawnt?”

Crazy Cloud

As I drove east across Pasadena yesterday morning, having dropped my daughter Grace at school, I noticed this strange cloud. The sky was an intense blue with a lot of bright white cirrus clouds stretched across it. But ahead of me was this dark cloud, low near the horizon, that looked like someone had taken a handful of gray charcoal and smudged it, diagonally across the low sky. I kept looking at it, as I drove, wondering if everyone around me was noticing it too.

An hour later I was hiking up my usual path and the same cloud was still sitting in the east, but now it was dumping rain. There was no sign of rain anywhere else in the sky, but this funny cloud was definitely letting loose. The light all around was that almost eerie golden light that can happen before a storm and there were deep rumblings in the distance. Smog was making a rainbow along the skyline. I stopped a pair of women on the path just to say, "Isn't this amazing? I've never seen anything like this before in LA!" (They agreed and kept walking.) It is so unusual to see a maverick cloud like that, especially in SoCal, especially this time of year. I continued up the hill.

When I reached the top an hour later, the cloud seemed much closer, the light was still incredible and the rumblings were louder. Didn't think much of it. I thought I might feel a few drops of rain but the rain didn't seem to be heading my way. A bit later as I headed back down the trail I felt a few drops and thought, with an already disappointed feeling, "Oh well, it will probably not amount to more than this light rain."

Well, as if to prove me wrong, that crazy cloud started dumping big drops on my head and just as I was about halfway down, it said Hello! I was approaching these three mega electric tower things and as I was about a hundred yards away, lightening struck the wires between them with a crack of thunder so loud it sent my body up into the air a few inches. I started laughing at my jumping bean self and let the air under my feet propel me into a sprint. I didn't want to be under those towers if it struck again. (I know, I know, lightning doesn't strike twice...)

I kept up the pace for the rest of the way down, the big drops drenching me to the skin, listening to the thunder travel farther away fast, laughing out loud as I enjoyed the rare and exquisite sensation of running in a real downpour.

Birthday Wishes

Tomorrow is the last day that Frances will be three. We had a small celebration yesterday with friends and will do something on her actual birthday, the day after tomorrow. I have always celebrated my kid's birthdays as milestones for them and of course for me as well. But this one is hitting me sideways and I am feeling a touch of sadness as I watch my little baby turn into a decidedly big girl.

It all happened so gradually. Just the way the crease in her thigh slowly disappeared, like a swell on the ocean, fading to nothing until all signs of it are lost. I can still see the spot where her fleshy leg dents in ever so slightly, but maybe even that is just my imagination at this point. (No one else can see it when I point it out.) I find myself relishing the way she says certain words the wrong way like breftik for breakfast and intreding for interesting. Any day now those will disappear as well.

So as I continue this week of celebrating her birth and the fact that she will be turning a big four years old, and as I am filled with satisfaction with the job she is doing of teaching us how to raise her, I am also allowing a little grief, a little sadness to be present as well. It is necessary to let go of all the sweetness that they outgrow and welcome the new sweetness that they grow into. I have so much to look forward to, which I know from engaging with her older sister on new levels all the time. But, there is a but...and part of it is just the baby fat that I will miss. Part of it is the funny words. Part of it is the incomprehensible but stunning writing that she does. And part of it is just childhood itself. A passage that has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Reentry

I am lying in the bathtub, soaking my muscles in hot, salty water, knowing something has changed but unable to say exactly what. What happens when I spend three days in the forest, precisely? What was happening when I laid in a field thirty years ago, staring at my feet? Even at sixteen, I knew in that moment that I was changing and I took a picture of my feet to mark the place in time when I recognized it. I still remember it when I look at that snapshot, now a middle aged woman. I still see in that color photograph that there was a part of me that wanted to be recognized, wanted to be acknowledged, wanted to be seen and heard and felt. It was the part of me that was completely and utterly happy to be lying in a field under a perfect blue sky. The part of me that wished I could stay there all day and night instead of having to be back at the barn to do chores in time to get cleaned up for a big dinner. I wanted to stay in my horse-smelling jeans and cowboy boots forever. I wanted to sleep in them, outside, in the grass, with the horses who were grazing next to me.

Instead I am part of the civilized world. Born and raised in the city, I still call myself a city-girl and though I have always fantasized about escaping it, I also wonder how I would fare. I lie in a bathtub after an arduous hike up a steep hill, relaxing tired muscles in a large white bathtub, in a big house. Tonight I will sleep in my comfortable king size bed with my husband. We will remark about how nice it is to be home and joke about cutting a hole in the ceiling so we can see the stars like we did last night and the night before.

I left some part of me back there in that magnificent landscape. The one we took in with big gulps of breath as we hiked down a switchback trail that hugged the face of a mountain, descending a thousand feet in a mile stretch. Pristine wilderness, mountains covered by trees and divided by a river stretching out for days. The kind of wilderness you have to drive a long way down a desolate road to get to the edge of. And then hike in for many miles down steep trails and across rivers and open meadows and through burned out woods to get to the camp. The kind you fall in love with every step of the way because it is so damn beautiful, so clean, so magnificent in it’s untouchedness.

But what happened there? Did I bring some of it back with me? Of course I did. I have the feathers that were presented in a great pile for me to pick a few from. I have the square shaped piece of granite. I have the small chunk of wood that termites carved their tiny hieroglyphs into. I have the images, carefully recorded on data machines and in paper notebooks, of the snake in the river, the black dragonfly being eaten by the yellow spider, the coyote that crossed our path, the bear that huffed behind a bush, the trees turned to charcoal by forest fire, the hawk and the eagle, the butterflies and the birds. I brought all of that out with me, carried like the garbage we made and picked up on the trail, packed it out like a good hiker. But there is something, still, that I don’t quite get my hands around. If the wilderness is where I find myself again, why does it feel like I left something of me behind?