CHAPTER TEN: Time, Time, Time, No Time!

More than likely, you have put that crazy CHAPTER ONE out of your mind. I fully understand as I went a bit wild trying to stuff three different stories (Mine, Leah's and Gina's) into that one chapter, along with lessons in physics and calculus.

Hopefully, though, you will recall the lesson that Einstein taught us: there is no such thing as time. That great physicist thought that “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Everything, it seems, happens all at once in the eternal NOW!

I'm not going to take up Einstein's claim, or his scientific reasoning, at least not NOW. But I am going to tell you that for the past year and a half or so, just before I turned 70, I've started to believe what my very spiritual therapist Mary M kept telling me, all those years we spoke. Time, from Mary's perspective, collapses in on itself, folding in and around like a giant spiral.

Remember in the last chapter, how I asked you to keep an open mind? Well, so, please do, as I tell you this: I have myself experienced the malleability of time; I'm referring in part to my ability to be in my bis bis nonna Filomena's life way back in the mid-1800s. Some would say that it's just my imagination at work. Perhaps. But when I get very quiet and close my eyes, I feel her arise.

Or I sink into her life! I am so close to her that I see the pores in her face. I see exactly how her eyebrows are growing, a bit wildly at the center of her forehead. There is some very faint, but slightly darkened hair growing above her mouth.

I am staring now into a bowl of steaming cereal; I pick up a carved wooden spoon and lift a spoonful of the mush to my mouth. I feel it sliding down my throat. I reach for another bowl; the finish on the yellowed ceramic is lined with the thinnest cracks. I drink the thick dark coffee that has been boiled on the wood stove.

That of course is my imagination at work. But then, what exactly is the imagination? When we write fiction, we use our minds to bring a whole world alive, both for the writer and the reader. The mind is conjuring up something that feels real! I think about the fact that neuroscientists have shown in experiments that when a person plays the piano, certain brain circuits are activated in her mind. But when that same person simply imagines playing the piano, the very same brain circuits light

up!

In other words, we can actually create a physical reality by thinking what we think! The implications for this are enormous for our health.

Which is one reason why it's so important to me to try to focus on positive thoughts and feelings, whenever possible.

So now I will tell you about some ancient shamanic practices and what they tell us about stepping out of time into infinity!

*******

Recently, I started an on-line class with a well-known American medical anthropologist, Dr. Alberto Villoldo.

Several decades ago, Dr. Villoldo left a faculty research position at San Francisco State University, where he supervised a lab that was investigating how energy medicine could change brain chemistry. In his words, he "traded his laboratory for a pair of hiking boots and a ticket to the Amazon," where he began to learn shamanic healing. He has spent the last four decades learning to become a shaman himself.

Dr. Villoldo says that shamans are adept at "stepping out of time" by getting in touch with the Wiracocha, the luminous energy field that surrounds the body and connects us to the one great source of light.

Recall the fact, he says, that saints are often depicted with halos. Those rings of light are, in fact, part of the energy system that surrounds all of us humans (the saints are special in that they are more enlightened!) In this week's class, Dr. Villoldo invited us to experience the Wiracocha, which is the Incan people's word for that source of all that is sacred.

Saturday, February 24, 2024 Journaling, I write: This practice is coming at just the right moment today because I am feeling

homesick for the first time since we left Massachusetts on January 10th. I was feeling at loose ends today, not sure what to do with myself. So I decided to switch on Class 2 of the Shamanic Healing program. In the video, Dr. Villoldo is sitting cross-legged on a mat with what looks to be a jungle outside the window behind him. I begin to follow his directions, bringing my arms over my head to feel the source of light that connects me to the Universe.

By the time the exercise ends, I feel energized. Not only that, as I hold my hands about eight inches away from each other, I feel a warm pulsing glow between them. I bring my hands back and forth, closer and farther away and it is almost as if there is an accordion of light and energy expanding and contracting between my palms. And then I open arms and bring them overhead and surround myself in light. The exercise is surprisingly intense. And so very very calming!

Sunday, February 25, 2024k

8:45 a.m.

Sitting side by side with Rich, I switch on Dr. Villoldo's exercise again, the one that enables us for brief moments, to step out of ordinary time and into the infinity of the universe. In Dr. Villoldo's terminology, we are opening the Wiracocha, just as the shamans of the Andes do. "This practice envelops our physical body and allows us, for a few brief moments, to step outside of ordinary time," he says.

We begin. He instructs us to take a couple of deep breaths, and we do, and on the third breath, we slowly raise our arms over our head, to touch the light of our luminous energy field -- it exists in everyone. He calls it the eighth chakra.

Very slowly, we lower our arms to the sides. He tells us to feel the energy field around us. We raise our arms again, and then, twisting slightly, we slowly bring our arms down in front and in back of us.

Do you feel the energy? he asks. It is a giant bubble that surrounds you.

And honestly, I do feel a kind of warm sac. I see it in my mind as rays of sunshine enveloping me.

He asks us to feel the inside of the light bubble. "Are there places that are slightly weaker?" Can you feel those places that need attending to? Can you run your hands over those spaces, covering those weaknesses?

I have my eyes closed, but I have a real sense that I can feel my life force; it is so comforting. And so simple. Once I start running my hands over the inside of the bubble, I don't really want to stop.

Dr. Villoldo then leads us in an experience of our other seven chakras. First, he says, place your left hand on your heart and feel the giant drum. Then move your right hand to your pubic bone: feel the first chakra. After a few moments, move your right hand up to your abdomen, just below your navel. Here is your second chakra. Take your hand and make a circle around the chakra. Breathe into it very slowly.

Up now to the third chakra, the solar plexus. Once again, he says, make slow circles. "Feel the inside of your chakra with your finger, like the inside of a bowl."

Then we are back to the heart chakra, now with both hands covering our chest. We rest our arms there, feeling the great drum that keeps us going for decades and decades! How many times it pumps, in even one day! One hour!

Now we move to the throat chakra, covering it with both hands.

Then to the mythical third eye in the center of the forehead. And then to the seventh chakra, "your connection to the heavens," he says, at the top of the head.

Before we complete the exercise, he has us run our hands up and down the front of our bodies, where the life force meridians lie. And then, we run a hand up the center of the body.

As he finishes, we bring our arms back over our heads, closing the Wiracocha, the sacred space.

I understand now. How I might every day, at any given time, take myself out of ordinary time to experience moments of infinity, moments outside of the "arrow" of time. Dr. Villoldo says this is a key step in improving our health.

One thing is absolutely clear to me: I can really feel the luminous energy field he spends so much time describing. A few minutes after Rich and I finish listening to the video, I get up from the floor to do my regular morning exercises. I always begin my routine by raising one arm overhead, and reaching across to the opposite side. Then I do change sides and do the same thing with the other arm.

What I am not expecting on Sunday morning is that as I start to do my routine, I feel the energy field overhead. I pause the exercise and just stand there, holding my arms above my head, moving my hands slowly in every direction, enjoying the feeling of the warm energy against the palms of my hands.

It's so relaxing that I don't want to stop! It feels wonderful just to stand there being aware of this giant ball of light, feeling it above and all around me!

Rich says the shamanic ritual reminds him of a Navaho prayer that he has always loved:

"In beauty I walk

"With beauty before me I walk

"With beauty behind me I walk

"With beauty above me I walk

"With beauty all around me I walk"

CHAPTER NINE: "Mom and Dad Appear After I Open the Book of Sayings!"

Just so you know, this business with my parents contacting me via my iphone isn't the first time they have made themselves known to me!

It actually started four years ago, when I began writing in Italian in earnest.

In 1999, for my parents’ 50th Golden wedding anniversary, I decided I would create a scrapbook with as many of my mother’s and my grandparents’ Italian sayings as I could recall. I printed them out on gold paper, and set them all on delicate green tissue paper.

And then I assembled the scrapbook.

After my Mom died very suddenly in October of 2015, and my Dad moved into assisted living, I inherited the book. I had packed it away but as I began "writing" in Italian in 2020, I decided one morning to go into the basement to find the scrapbook.

I carried it upstairs and sat down on the sofa with Poco resting beside me. I opened the book and smiled as I read and recalled my mother speaking these sayings. My mother was an angel, beloved by everyone who met her. She could be hysterically funny, too, especially when she was speaking Italian. And especially when she was imparting wisdom via these homegrown sayings. Some of them are really funny, and others simply offer great wisdom.

“Chi te polvere spara, chi no, sente la botta.”

“The person with gunpowder shoots, the person without it, listens to the explosion.”

“La belleza fin alla porta. La bonda fin alla morte.”

“Good looks as far as the door. Goodness as far as the grave.”

As I read, I started to feel an overwhelming affection for my mother

and father and a deep connection to them and all of my ancestors. I also felt gratitude that I had made this book for them. Reading it made me feel infinitely closer to my parents – even though mom had been gone for five years, and my dad had passed in August of 2019.

What's interesting is that I was feeling more loving towards them, even though I was, at the same time, getting in touch with all the anger and resentment I felt because growing up, I had no fun,

I know, it sounds a bit contradictory, what I was feeling. But that's exactly how emotions are: complex. A bit like the weather. Sometimes it's sunny, with grey blue clouds hovering in the distance. Sometimes it's overcast, but with the sun emerging on the horizon for a magnificent sunset. Sometimes it rains or snows with the sun shining!

Mary was forever encouraging me to let myself "feel all of my feelings," and also, to accept all of them without judgement.

A key to happiness, she assured me, was getting in touch with feelings. Also, she stressed the importance of focusing on gratitude for all of my blessings. And, perhaps the most important of her lessons:

Love yourself unconditionally! Love yourself simply because you are YOU! In other words, she said, you don't have to achieve a single thing in order to love yourself. You don't have to be famous or rich or beautiful (by society's standards) or successful. All you need to do is to let the warm glow of love fill you up.

And when it does, it inevitably spills over, so that you find yourself loving others!

******

One morning in March of 2020, I carried the scrapbook into my study and started journaling.

“Mom and Dad, I know you are listening to me as I learn to speak new words every day.”

“Mamma e Papá so che mi stavi ascoltando mentre imparo a pronunciare nuove parole ogni giorno.”

All of a sudden, as I was writing this sentence in the journal, a wild rain started to fall. It came out of nowhere! My husband walked into my study and said, “My God, it’s like we’ve been caught in a carwash.”

“I know,” I said gazing out the window. "So strange!"

Suddenly it occurred to me: could this be a sign? Were Mom and Dad reaching out to me?

“Mom and Dad, I love you so much and I think you are here with me!”

“Mamma e Papá, ti amo cosí tanto e penso che tu fossi qui con me!”

I decided to write a blogpost about what had happened that morning.
I titled it "Italian is Alive Inside Me."

After I finished writing, I inserted a photo of me and my folks into the post,

a photo that I have always loved, one where I am standing between my parents. Everyone looks so happy in the photo.

When I went to print out the post, I was surprised! Nothing at all printed out, nothing at all except the photo of me and my parents!

It may sound crazy. My husband certainly thought it was crazy. But that too made me wonder: could this be another sign that my parents were trying to reach out to me?

CHAPTER EIGHT: "Mom and Dad Are Looking Out for Me!"

I wasn't going to write this chapter next. I was going to write a chapter about TIME, about how Einstein says/said there is no such thing as time. Past, present and future, he says/said, are all an "illusion."

OK, but now I have to put that chapter aside, for another time, because Mom and Dad keep calling me! Not on the phone, well not exactly.

It started quite a while ago. I would say it's been happening for at least six months or a year.

But lately, they've been stepping up their contacts. The other day, I got one from mom, AND one from dad, on the very same day, February 7, 2024.

What happens is this: I am on my phone, texting, and then I put my phone down for a moment. And when I go to pick it up again, I have, in the texting line, either:

mom

OR

pop.

Here below, I will show you the latest two contacts, from last week.

The first is from Mom, while I was texting with a friend in the morning:

And the second, three hours later, from my dad (calling himself pop) while I was texting with my daughter Lindsay:

Something similar happened about two weeks before, on January 23, 2024; again, mom and dad got in touch on the same day. First, when I was texting with my friend Leslie in the morning:

And then, when I was texting with another friend in the afternoon, my dad popped up again.

This has happened many many times. I've only been recording them (via iphotos) for a few months.

The first time I recorded a contact, Rich and I were travelling in southern Italy (in part to research my great great grandmother Filomena's life). It was the 27th of October, 2023, and we were in Lecce, a beautiful old city in the region of Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot.) Rich had just been diagnosed with COVID. He was pretty sick with a fever, chills, aches, congestion, and a sore throat

I had gone out in search of a "farmacia" for medication; I was completely distracted because my husband was busy texting me. He was trying to explain what medication the physician, who spoke only Italian, had told him to buy. The woman at the farmacia didn't speak English either. Ayayayay.

The last thing I expected at that moment was to see my "pop" suddenly pop up on my phone!

Perhaps because I was so so surprised, I decided to record dad's appearance. When I told my sister Holly about it (because we often talk about missing our dad!) she was skeptical. "Claud, dad never called himself pop!" she observed. And while she is right, most of the time he did not call himself pop. I do recall times when he was in a good mood, he did refer to himself that way.

Anyway, it kept happening.

Once, Dad appeared while Rich and I were texting about politics.

That's not surprising, considering the fact that my dad and I had countless arguments about politics. Dad supported Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and on and on while I supported Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden. (I never asked my dad if he voted for Trump, because, by 2016, when Dad was 90 years old, I had told him that I refused to argue about politics with him anymore; he was too old, and I cared about him too much.)

So lately I have started to keep track of the "sightings." There have been perhaps one or two a week. And then something even weirder happened.

At the end of December, my mother appeared not as MOM but as

DEE, which was everybody's favorite nickname for her (my mother's first name was Dena.)

The weirdest thing about this DEE sighting was that it came in conversation with my son Noah, who lives in Colorado. Noah was texting with me and my husband, telling us that he and a good friend had just been meditating for FOUR (yes, four!) hours. He texted:

"Lots of images of grandparents came up in the last hour"

"Lots of crying"

"They loved me so much!"

And that's EXACTLY when his grandmother DEE appeared as

/e

e dee

When I pointed this sighting out to my son, he responded:

"That is VERY weird"

and after I sent him more examples, he wrote

"Hmmmm!"

"Maybe there is a ghost afoot!"

Even my sister Holly lost some of her skepticism. When I described to her what had transpired with Noah, sending her that chain of texts after he meditated for four hours, she replied

"Holy crap!"

So now, of course, the question arises: can I explain what's going on here?

Of course not, not if you're asking me to present the underlying physics of how this happens.

But I do have an answer to the question: What does this mean?

What I think it means is that my parents are very close to me, spiritually. I do feel their presence, quite often. Even though I don't see my therapist Mary anymore, I remember how clearly and emphatically she believed that

there is no death, for the soul, the loved ones we lose are always with us, and

our ancestors are looking out for us, and they love us beyond measure.

She explained it to me this way: "Think about how much you love your children. Then think about how even more precious your grandchildren are to you. Now imagine your grandchildren having children. And those children, and on and on..."

With each generation, your love intensifies.

So I am going to stop here. Because clearly I have gone out on a shaky limb here. I am quite sure that there are readers who are highly skeptical that my parents are trying to contact me. I fully realize that I am asking you the reader to believe in...well, in ghosts, as Noah suggested.

But that isn't going to stop me from pursuing contact with my dear parents. I decided not long ago to text them directly. And to write the invitation in Italian!

In English, what I wrote was:

"Dear Dee and Ric, if you want to speak to or through me,

I am listening, especially when I meditate!"

So far, they haven't answered.

CHAPTER SIX: "Fun? It Has Taken Me a Lifetime to Learn How to Have Fun!"

I don’t think it was any coincidence that at the same time I began expressing myself in Italian back in 2020, I was also beginning to deal in earnest with some difficult issues related to my upbringing.

There were two themes running through the many conversations I was having with my therapist, Mary M.

One was my dad’s tendency to flare up in anger. His outbursts could be terrible; they were very scary to me as I grew up. Indeed, his blowups were a reality up until the very end of his life.

Just months before he passed in August of 2019, I remember a particular outburst one day when my sister and I were meeting with several staff members from the independent living apartment where he was. I don’t remember why he screamed at me. Honestly, I think I’ve put it out of my mind because it was so upsetting and puzzling.

All I recall is him turning to me in the presence of several non-family members and pointing at me and screaming that he didn’t want me involved in whatever decision it was regarding his care.

I was astonished. And hurt. And uncertain. Why he was screaming at me? What exactly had I done to deserve this humiliating tirade? I tried to think back, but to no avail.

But this is how Dad was. He was a genuinely loving man and he could be very pleasant. And things could be sailing along just fine. But if something set him off – be it a discussion about politics or some other situation that irked him, or which he believed he had been wronged, well, then, it was as if a lighted match descended on an open container of gasoline.

The other theme in my therapy had to do with my mom, and her illness and her tendency toward fear and depression.

As a very young child I had watched her struggle for breath. I was terrified that she was going to die and so was she! Mom couldn't help being sick, of course, and it certainly wasn't her fault that she had no one to help her out. But the consequences of her having asthma, at a time when the disease was not treated like it is today, were very serious: along with my brother and sister, I carried a deep-seated fear through most of my adulthood.

But it would be wrong to suggest that my parents weren't good parents. I could feel my parents' deep love and concern for me growing up. Ironically, I was rather sickly as a young child. I had serious bouts of pneumonia at ages three, five and seven. During one of those bouts, I also had German measles and an ear infection.

Despite her own illness, my mother was always there to care for me! I remember her rubbing alcohol on my bare arms and legs when I had really bad fevers. I remember her sitting by my bed and then, coming to the hospital to see me, as I lay in a crib.

What I don't remember, at all, growing up was this: I have no memories of having any fun!

We were very short on money, so naturally vacations were out of the question. But we didn't do other, less expensive things. In part because of her illness, but also because Mom wasn't oriented toward the outdoors, my family never went camping, or hiking, or canoeing. We never went ice skating, or snowshoeing, or bowling, or playing tennis. I remember sledding in the winter, and I remember very occasionally going swimming at the ocean in southern Connecticut -- but it was rare! And I don't remember ever seeing my mother step into the water!

In both houses we lived in, we were in rural areas, but we never took even short walks through the woods!

I remember going to the drive-in when it was just my parents, me and my older brother, Rich. But by the time my sisters arrived, the car was too small to go to the drive-in anymore!

As a family of six, I remember going to the movies...once! It was Memorial Day, and we went to see "The Swiss Family Robinson." I was giddy with joy that day. But it was not something that we repeated.

We spent most of our weekends traveling from our house in Pleasant Valley back to see the "family" -- my mother's parents in Canton, CT and my dad's family, about another half hour away, in Bristol. What did we do? Mostly, we would sit around and eat. The adults enjoyed wine, and conversation. We kids played with our cousins outdoors in the backyards.

On the way to Connecticut (a drive of about an hour and a half), we passed through Amenia, New York on Route 44. There was a diner in Amenia, and every time we drove through the town, my brother and I would send up a cheer: "Brookside Diner just ahead, Brookside Diner just ahead." My parents never stopped -- not even for a coke or a cup of cocoa!

As we left the town, we would send up a different, much sadder, cheer: "Brookside Diner just behind. Brookside Diner, just behind!"

I have mixed feelings bringing these stories up. I can fault my parents, but when I think about it, I have to ask: was it THEIR fault?

Not really! They were the children of very hard-working Italian American parents, my grandparents, who scrimped and saved through the Great Depression and the Second World War. They spent all of their time and money paying for housing, and putting food on the table! They didn't think about having FUN! To them, fun or enjoyment was what they got when they enjoyed their children and siblings, sharing plenty of good food!

But it's also important that I talk about this situation for this reason: one of the root causes of my lifelong depression growing up was the fact that I didn't emerge from a family that knew what it meant to have fun, or to enjoy the moment. It's ironic, because today we think of Italy, and Italians, as the people who know so well how to enjoy life. Besides first-class food, they supply the world with extraordinary art and music.

By and large though my ancestors came to the United States because they were so poor; they weren't the lucky Italians who had the leisure and disposable income to appreciate the arts. (I say that but then I recall that my mother's mom, Grandma Mish, went to the opera in Hartford for years.)

What my ancestors knew how to do was work! My dad, who was not fortunate enough to go to college, worked hard at IBM and enjoyed a good career there. On weekends, he spent much of his time in the basement, on woodworking projects (which he truly enjoyed), or taking care of the house. In the summer he had a large vegetable garden. Mom was a devoted mother and an extraordinary cook and housewife. She did embroidery and excelled as a baker. Once we kids were grown, she took up stained glassmaking and produced dozens of wonderful pieces of art, many of which I own and treasure.

But still, growing up, we did not manage to learn from Mom or Dad how to enjoy ourselves.

When I think back to what we did as a family of six, I am faced with one memory: blueberry picking. Unfortunately I don't remember it being any fun at all.

My dad fashioned berry-picking containers from old coffee cans. He punched holes on both sides of the cans and laced them up with strings, which went around our necks. Then we drove to the blueberry fields in Wingdale, New York. And we stood for what felt like hours, picking blueberries.

I remember one year when my older brother rebelled. I remember him saying he just didn't feel like picking blueberries that day. My father was furious; he warned Rich that if he didn't pick berries, he would get none of my mom's extraordinary blueberry pie. And in fact, Rich didn't get any pie.

When I hit puberty at about age 13, my father tried every which way to restrict me. He told me repeatedly he feared that I would "get embroiled." Eventually I came to realize that what he meant was, he feared I would get pregnant.

One summer about that time, my first cousins (who had a beach house on the Connecticut shore) invited me to stay for a couple of weeks. I was dying to do it. My dad, however, said that his sister was much too lenient with her daughters (the oldest of which was quite boy-crazy). Dad refused to let me stay with my cousins at the beach. I came home to our house in Pleasant Valley and I barricaded myself in my bedroom and read books.

I did enjoy riding my bike, however. I loved the feeling of gliding along on the country roads, cool air streaming my face and body. I could ride "no hands" and I loved doing it.

During the summers, my brother and I would ride our bikes several miles in order to get to a state park that had a large swimming pool. It was huge and very overcrowded and by the time we rode home, we were sunburned and sweaty, and hotter than when we started.

What did I do in the summers? I always envied my friend Leslie who went to YWCA camp, but we could not afford it. Instead, I spent hot summer days as a youngster, sitting on blankets in the garage, where it was cooler than inside the house; there on the garage floor, my sister and our girlfriends played with our Barbie dolls. As I got older, I learned how to sew and that hobby occupied more and more of my time.

In high school, I joined an interdenominational youth group, a large singing group with many talented guitarists and other musicians. My social life came to revolve more and more around performances, some of which involved travel. I absolutely loved the rehearsals, the performances, and all the socializing in between. My dad, meanwhile, objected, complaining that the youth group took up too much of my time. It wasn't as though the singing was affecting my grades, though: I was an A student all the way through high school.

A memory stands out: I hadn't been in the group very long when an older performer came up to me and said something along these lines: "You know, you are pretty when you smile. You ought to do it more often."

I didn't learn to smile more, though. What I did learn to do, from my parents' and teachers' examples, was how to work hard. Along with that, I learned that it felt rewarding to achieve goals and earn other people's respect. Is it any wonder that I stepped onto the achievement treadmill in a great big way? Thus began my incessant desire to rack up one achievement after another; not only did I earn the highest grades possible, I also made it a point to join as many clubs and activities as I possibly could in high school, no matter whether I really cared about what they were doing.

Interestingly, my brother emerged from the same household as a first-class athelete. His chosen sport was rowing; he adored the sport and he excelled. He rowed for the first time in high school on the Hudson River. Later, he rowed at college and was in a two-man shell rowing in the Olympic finals in 1972. Ultimately, Rich became a very successful college crew coach; he enjoyed a 50-year career in the sport.

I never played sports; at age nine, I started ballet lessons and kept them up through high school (I am very grateful to my parents for buying me those lessons.) Sadly, though, the teacher -- Mildred Ruenes -- was strict, demanding and a bit snooty. I remember the French names of the dance positions were carefully written in cursive on all the walls of the dance studio. We were supposed to commit the French names -- like pas de bourree -- to memory; I never did. And I never felt much satisfaction trying to dance ballet.

When I left for college, I immediately started meeting all kinds of people, some of whom were wealthy and had spent their lives skiing and boating and travelling and playing tennis. Even among students who were, like me, on scholarship, so many of them seemed to know how to enjoy themselves, doing whatever it was they were doing!

I didn't realize it then, but it would take me decades to understand what it means to have fun. And it would take me almost as long to see that my lifelong depression was intimately linked with my inability to have fun.

As I finish writing this chapter, I realize how depressing it is.

And so, readers, my deepest apologies. All I can say is that I needed to write it, to lay out in a line of words how I felt growing up.

But now that this chapter is behind me, I can look forward to the far more hopeful chapters that follow! Because all of this writing is leading up to an answer to one question:

How does a person who has been thoroughly rehearsed in fear, shame and negative thinking growing up become a person who can live joyfully in the NOW?

CHAPTER SEVEN: When it Comes to my Healing, "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been!"

These days, I have healing on my mind. The kind of healing that may be most challenging: recovering from depression. Before I go any further to talk about how delving into my Italian history helped to heal me of the recurring blues, I want to tell you a different story: It's a story about how the huge blue maple tree that used to sit squarely in my front yard helped me get through cancer!   

The story of the blue tree involves faith. As does the story of my healing my deeply frozen self by diving head first into my Italian ancestry. Both stories require you to suspend your disbelief. I ask you to please please keep an open mind.  And I ask you too to believe in the limitless power that each of us has to heal ourselves.  If you’ve read anything about the so-called placebo effect, you will know what I’m talking about.  If you are told that you are taking a very potent medicine, one that will cure you, then oftentimes it works, even if that medicine is just a sugar pill. 

 

The mind is an incredibly powerful thing when it comes to controlling the body. And when you begin learn how to harness the mind, it can also be extraordinarily powerful in healing itself, that's right, the mind can effectively heal the mind, and I am living proof!

 

OK.  But first, back now to the tree in question: a giant old maple that used to tower over the front yard of my comfy old white farmhouse in Austerlitz, New York.  

 

Anyone who knows me know that I have a deep affinity for maple trees.  I wrote my first novel, Dreaming Maples, after I “saw” the main characters acting out their heartbreak beneath a set of imaginary maples up in Vermont.

 

The key maple tree in my book is one I referred to as the Mother Maple, because it was a pivotally-important tree for my characters (the novel is a mother-daughter story.)

 

Anyway, the tree in my front yard served as a model for this tree that inhabited my mind back when I was writing the book in the 1990s.  I spent five years writing Dreaming Maples, and a few more years revising it. So I had what you might call a very close relationship to this tree.

 

OK, so this is the part that’s a little hard to explain.

 

On a warm night in July of 2003, I had to leave my home to drive to New York City.  I had to go to Sloan Kettering for a biopsy.  It was the second summer in a row that I was dealing with cancer (Hodgkin’s Disease, a type of lymphoma.) The doctor at Sloan Kettering had told me a week or so before that I had a “new” spot of cancer, and that I absolutely had to have a stem cell transplant, a rather drastic procedure that scours your immune system, bringing you to the edge of death before restoring some immune function.  

 

The thing about the stem cell is that it can kill you just as easily as it can cure you.  And since I was feeling perfectly healthy, and had been for months, I was understandably reluctant to submit to the stem cell treatment.

 

OK, so I left the house with my husband under a perfectly clear blue sky that evening in July.  I don’t remember if I was crying or not as I left, but I know I had terrific heartache.  It was easily one of the scariest nights of my entire life.

 

My children stayed behind.  My children are the ones who reported the weird episode with the maple in the front yard. Within minutes of our departure, the kids reported that the blue sky disappeared and in its place, a vicious lightning storm whipped up out of absolutely nowhere.  

 

“Mom,” my daughter told me the next day, “It was the strangest thing I ever saw.  You left, and everything was absolutely fine one minute and then the next thing we knew, lightning and thunder came crashing down, and then, all of a sudden the tree just collapsed.”

 

Just as fast as the storm hit, it vanished.  The maple, a tree that had seen a century of storms, was split in two, the top half fallen across the yard.

 

When I got back home the next day, there were giant green boughs lying like mammoth arms across the lawn.  I started to cry.  To me, it was though that giant motherly tree I loved so much was reaching her motherly arms out to comfort and protect me.  She had seen me the night before get into the car and drive away, to do one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.  It was almost as though she was calling out to me, throwing her biggest boughs  half way across the yard.  She had laid herself, her life, right down there for me in the front yard. 

 

To honor that sacrifice, I decided to paint the remaining portion of the tree blue.  

 

I hired a guy to come in to saw up the biggest boughs, and then I went to Home Depot to buy a gallon of sky blue paint.  I asked the salesman behind the counter what kind of paint I should buy for “outdoor use.”

 

“Well, so, ma’am, what are you painting?” he asked me.

 

I scrunched up my face. “I am...painting...a tree,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t laugh.

He smiled.  He sold me the right paint, and a long handle for my roller.  

 

Over the next few days, I painted.  Once I’d climbed as high as I dared on the stepladder, I phoned a young man in town and he donned a leather harness and hoisted himself up 30 feet and swung there, right above the main road, and he painted the very top of the tree blue. The neatest thing about the blue color of the tree is that it is exactly the same color as the sky, so that if you looked up, the top of the broken tree seems to disappear into the ethos.

 

Later in the summer, when my sister Karen arrived from California for a visit, she was so moved by my project that she asked if she could help me add a little extra color to the bottom of the tree.  Together, we used the roller to add sea green and sun yellow to the tree, using leftover paint we found in the basement. 

 

Painting that tree helped me face the trauma I had to deal with that summer.  It reinforced my faith in all kinds of ways.  It helped me find the courage to stand up to the miserable doctor at Sloan and say, “Look, I don’t care if you think I need a stem cell transplant, I disagree, and I want to get a second opinion.” (He was very arrogant and insisted I didn’t need a second opinion!  "Why do you need one? I'm the world’s expert in this area.")  

 

Painting that tree gave me the strength to go to Dana Farber in Boston to see a second oncologist. 

 

The night before I went to Boston, I held a healing ceremony beneath the blue tree.  I invited my closest friends and told them to bring drums and shakers.  We sat in a circle as the sun went down.  We lit candles.  We sang.  We banged on drums.  We asked for healing.  We offered up ears of corn.  We read Native American poetry.  We prayed for health, for me and for others.  We even had a woman there – a professional photographer— who insisted on capturing the event in pictures.

 

When the evening ended, I felt at peace.  I knew I had to go to see another oncologist the next morning.  I knew I was probably going to get the same message from him that I had gotten from the doctor at Sloan, that is, that I needed the stem cell transplant, that I would have to be in the hospital for months, and face the dangers associated with the most invasive high-intensity chemotherapy possible.

 Despite this looming reality, however, the healing ceremony beneath the blue tree filled me with peace, and hope and love and a deep certainty that I would be cared for. That somehow, some way, I would be healed. I felt I had the arms of all of my friends, and my blue Mother Maple, supporting me.

 

There is something else I need to add. Even though many people will reject out of hand what I am about to say, there are so many many others who know the immense power of prayer to heal, and to bring about miracles! What I am about to share with you is indeed a miracle, for which I am forever grateful!

So after that miserable madman doctor at Sloan informed me that I would be needing a stem cell transplant, I was so scared I could barely eat or sleep. What kept me going was Mother Mary, yes, that's right, the Virgin Mary. Even though I converted to Judaism right after my third child was born, I still say Hail Mary's whenever I am scared.

And so after the visit to Sloan, I began saying Hail Mary's AROUND THE CLOCK. Honestly, I said them in my sleep. And after a while, I started having a vision during the recitation of the prayers. In my mind, I saw a rectangle of light, as if sunshine was flowing through a window onto the floor. I can't explain why I had that vision; I routinely have visions of scenes before I write them down as fiction. But that vision of the rectangle of light was an even stronger vision than those that precede my writing.

At first I discounted it.

And now back to the story.

The next day, after the healing ceremony around the blue Mother Maple tree, the most amazing thing in the world happened. Sometimes I still cannot believe how things unfolded. My sister (who is a nurse), my husband, my daughter and I drove to Boston, and when we finally got in to the examining room to see the doctor at Dana Farber, he told us that he knew the doctor at Sloan, and that he disagreed completely with his opinion.

This silver-haired doctor was older; his blue eyes and his whole demeanor were remarkably kind.

His name was George Canellos -- only later would I learn that he is considered "the grandfather of Hodgkin's treatment," the doctor who had originated the most effective and widely used treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma.

 

SO OK, sitting there in Boston that day, I didn't think I was hearing correctly.

 

But Dr. Canellos was saying what I thought he was saying: that Dr. Alan Moskowitz at Sloan Kettering had treated me the summer before with an experimental chemo regimen (called the Stanford Five.)  He said that he suspected that the radiation that I had endured in 2002 probably didn't do the trick.

"I told Moskowitz [at a conference they had both recently attended] that if he was going to use the Stanford Five then he had better do a very careful job of radiating. Obviously, in this case, he didn't!"

 

To say that I was shocked doesn't begin to describe how I felt. As my family and I sat there in utter amazement, Dr. Canellos said that he would need to review my CT scans, etc., but that in his opinion, he was pretty sure that I would not need the stem cell transplant after all.

When I told Dr. Canellos that Dr. MADMAN Moskowitz at Sloan had been absolutely certain that I needed the stem cell transplant, Dr. Canellos shook his head and told me something even more remarkable and infuriating. He told me that Dr. Moskowitz' research involved treating Hodkgkin's patients whose first chemo treatment had failed; he was studying how these patients responded to stem cell therapy. In other words, Dr. Maman was glad that my first chemo treatement had "failed," because now he could use me in his fucking research protocal (please excuse the foul language, I reserve it for the very worst of people in the world.)

Anyway, Dr. Canellos looked me straight in the eye and said, "Moskowitz is a hammer, and in you, he saw a nail!"

Never in my life had a doctor said such negative things to me about another doctor! But here, of course, we were talking about a life and death situation, and we were also in the presence of a real mensch, one very lovely and caring doctor who was perfectly comfortable letting another scoundrel of a physician have it!

 

It’s hard to put into words how I felt when I heard this news.  If you have ever faced a life-threatening illness, or know a loved one who has, then you might have some idea. I know I sobbed tears of joy.  I know my husband and my sister and my daughter did too. And I know even though there is no proof that the blue tree helped, in my mind, it gave me the faith I needed to make it through.

OK so here is the absolute weirdest thing. As I was sitting on that examination table at Dana Farber, I realized something: I was staring at the floor at

a giant rectange of light! It was coming through the skylight overhead!

My blue Mother Maple had come through for me, but also, Mother Mary had too! My prayers had been answered in the most profound way imaginable.

Years later, I still cannot fully grasp this. But now I know that all I need do, whenever life throws its most wicked challenges, is sit back, and pray. And then let the Universe do its magic.

It doesn't matter who you pray to: the deity may be Hindu or Muslim or Jewish or Catholic. For me, the deity needs to be part of the Great Feminine, the goddess tradition that was so powerful that the Catholic Fathers in their great dis-wisdom, sought to do everything possible to displace the Virgin Mary.

Ah, but no matter what they did, SHE IS STILL REVERED WORLDWIDE!

OK, that was a little aside...

 

Well, so, it turned out the doctor at Dana Farber, a remarkably kind and wonderful man named George Canellos, was right.  I did not need the stem cell transplant.  I can't say how grateful I am to this day in August of 2020, to that doctor.  I also can't say how grateful I am that I have enjoyed enormously good health since 2003.

 

In 2015, we sold the old farmhouse, and by that point, most of the blue paint had worn away.

 

But I can't think about my beloved blue tree without stopping and saying a prayer of gratitude: thinking, "thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, for what you did for me."