On not returning to normal yet

I am writing this from a Van Galder bus en route from Madison to O’Hare airport, en route to Istanbul en route to Tel Aviv. Yes, Tel Aviv, Israel. The first picture above is me all ready to go earlier this afternoon. Some of you have already heard about my absolutely last-minute decision to join my beloved Aunt Ellen and Uncle Irving on their long-planned 13-day tour of Israel, and then stay a few extra days to visit with long-time friends Naomi and Rachel and their families. For those of you who are just hearing about it now, trust me, I am still nearly as surprised as you are!

Back around April or so, Naomi, who I’ve known since 3rd grade, implored me to plan a trip to Israel to visit her & her family this year during their planned Sabbatical. I demurred: “I have cancer and don’t know the outcome of my treatment. Besides, I haven’t been there since I was 14 and have no desire to go there unless it’s on a mission for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” And we had one of our first-ever conversations about our feelings as Jews about Israel – a topic fraught with emotion and potential conflict for practically any two Jews to discuss, and especially two who belong to different Jewish communities.

Sometime in the summer my Aunt told me my Uncle Irving is getting an award in Switzerland in November, and they decided to add a tour of Israel onto the trip. I adore my aunt and uncle, and Naomi’s birthday is in November, and so I said somewhat blithely, huh, maybe I should go with you! Ellen eagerly and equally blithely agreed. Since Don doesn’t like travel much, and he’s not as connected as I am emotionally to Israel, it seemed like a good opportunity to have someone else to travel with. We acknowledged it was somewhat far-fetched, and depended on a lot of things, including my lymph nodes being negative, recovering well from surgery, Don’s dad’s trajectory, and the tour getting enough participation to actually run (it was under-subscribed at that point). But Ellen thought there would be no problem waiting until after my surgery to decide, given the small size of the tour group.

Well, my surgery came and went, and then Don’s dad died and we went down to Indianapolis, then it was Yom Kippur, then I had about 2 weeks of intensely researching whether or not to seek further treatment options, then we went to the meditation retreat.

At the retreat, James Baraz spoke about taking action to care for others and the world as a part of living joyfully. He said, “follow your heartbreak.” James had just told us 4 pieces of good news on the issue of climate change, which is one of my areas of heartbreak (sorry, I don’t have my notes so I can’t tell them accurately). Feeling some relief and hope about that issue, my mind immediately went to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. For years I have thought that someday I might become more active on this issue. But it has usually seemed hopeless and overwhelming and I’ve been busy doing other things. I thought, maybe “someday” is now, as I had with other things during the retreat.

After I returned from the retreat, I came down with a bad cold. I wasn’t thinking much about the possible trip to Israel, and when I did I thought things like, “it’s too late,” and “it’s time for me to get back to work after so much time off from being sick.” Plus, whenever I heard reports of the latest spate of violence in Israel/Palestine, I felt glad I wasn’t going. The final straw (I thought) came when on Oct. 21st Naomi emailed to say she was planning a trip back to Madison for a student’s dissertation defense, and could she stay with me the weekend of Nov. 21-22. That, I knew, was the weekend after the 13-day tour my aunt & uncle were going on, and the most logical time for me to extend my stay to visit with Naomi. Ok, I’m definitely not going, I thought. (I hadn’t even told Naomi I was considering coming, because I didn’t want to get her hopes up!)

This brings us to last week – which was probably the first week I started feeling like maybe I was getting back to something like “normal.” I wish I had a way to track all the little signs of normalcy. I got my hair trimmed slightly (just because I stopped in to visit my hair guy, Tony at Hair on Monroe, and he offered to trim it for free where it was starting to look a little scraggly around the ears and neck). (Still far too short for a hairbrush). I made a dentist appointment. I trimmed the gradually moving indentation in my fingernails that I think marked the beginning of chemo off the ends of my nails. I put the card table that had had puzzles on it since April away. I put a bunch of leftover bandages, gloves, and other first aid equipment in a food pantry bag to give away. Many smaller, fleeting ones that when I notice I think I should write down, but then I forget.

I was still doing my low-fat diet, blogging about the retreat, doing thank-you notes, and beginning to contemplate with colleagues the next steps for my biggest professional commitment, CORE. Don and I said “yes” to a flurry of social invitations from people we hadn’t seen much of in a while. I had my first “survivorship” appointment, and I started telling people I was probably not going to do the clinical trial. I was “living into” what it felt like to not be in treatment anymore, before deciding definitively that I was done with it.

On Wednesday afternoon, Naomi called and told me the dates had changed for her student’s dissertation defense. That evening, coincidentally (?!) Don and I attended one in a series of “Israel/Palestine dialogues” organized by my congregation for the Madison Jewish community. It was very well-structured and facilitated by Harry Webne-Behrman, and was a rare time when I felt I could face into the conflicting emotions and conflicting stories about this issue. I learned a lot from the other people there, and left feeling a little more open to considering going to Israel as a tourist, rather than as a political statement. After all, I realized, if I were to decide to become an activist on this issue, there would likely be more than one trip, and beginning by reconnecting with my love for Israel would not be a bad place to start.

Still, I figured it was too late by now, and besides, I suspected I was fantasizing about this trip in part because I wanted to avoid returning to “normal.” A week ago Friday, I had my almost-weekly phone check-in with my sister, which we’ve been doing ever since we attended a Strozzi somatics training together in January of 2012 and decided to be each others’ “committed listeners” or accountability partners for the practices we committed to taking on. Well, our foci of practice have shifted many times over the months and years since then, and sometimes we just chat, but usually we check in on a pretty deep level. I told her about how facing into my fears of dying seemed to make other fears smaller. She asked, “like traveling to Israel?”

Now, I didn’t actually feel it was fear keeping me from going on the trip, so this wasn’t quite it – but the fact she asked me that in the context of a reflective conversation led me to notice a pang of wanting to go. I realized, I haven’t really let go of the idea! Still, it was then nearly Shabbat, and I usually try to unplug and have a “non-striving” day. Saturday afternoon, in another symptom of normalcy, I got down to my ceramics studio for the first time since before the surgery.

Sunday morning it felt like time to really get back to work – including answering a bunch of emails and making some decisions, including whether to say “yes” to a request to be on a panel of coaches at Madison Area Business Consultants’ meeting Nov. 12th. Oh, I realized almost as an afterthought, I guess I need to make the decision about Israel once and for all before I commit to that. I used a quick “muscle-testing” tool to check my intuition, and it said no, don’t go to Israel. That would’ve been that, except that I’ve come to feel that method doesn’t necessarily work for bigger, more complex decisions. Something bade me slow down. After all, I’m not that busy yet, why do I need to rush to be productive this morning? A lot of old habit energy there, and I remembered my commitment I’d made to let the cancer teach me to “slow down, relax back, and receive the present moment with gratitude.”

So I spent some more time. I put my hand on my heart and paid attention to what was arising. And realized, there were a LOT of feelings there. Not just about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but about my odd trip to Israel when I was 14 and traveled there alone and spent 6 completely unstructured and fairly isolated weeks living on a kibbutz with distant family who we didn’t really know and haven’t kept in touch with since. (The second picture above is me at 14, all ready to leave on that trip from my home in Ann Arbor, in 1981).

As I occasionally do when making a challenging decision, I did a short Tarot card reading. I used a “Zen Tarot” deck that I think my friend Karen gave me a couple of years ago, and pulled one card to represent going to Israel, and one card to represent staying home. Now, I don’t believe this kind of thing predicts the future or tells you anything you don’t already know, but I do think it can help access things that are deep down and not yet conscious. The third & 4th pictures above are the cards I drew: “Maturity” for going to Israel, and “Transformation” for staying. Except—Transformation was upside down when I picked it, which, the way I learned to read the cards, means the energy is blocked.

Well, I read what the book said about the cards, and looked at the pictures more, and felt the associations – the springtime blooming within the figure of “maturity” while winter reigned around her seemed to symbolize, to me, that maturity can come from revisiting one’s youth. And I wasn’t sure what kind of transformation would be blocked by staying home – except that when I made lists of the pros and cons of staying and going, most of the pros of going were full of love, freedom, and excitement, and most of the pros of staying were responsibilities or worries or concerns (e.g. the work projects before me, and the idea that I should be going to Israel on a peace mission, not as a tourist).

I felt quite confused – not that it wasn’t clear, but I felt sort of unable actually decide to go. I switched to looking at my to-do liss to see what really needed doing, and felt sort of demoralized and depressed. Exactly then Anita called to ask me if I wanted to go for a walk. It was a gorgeous day (thanks to the afore-mentioned climate change?!) and I immediately said yes. With her support (“it’s not crazy, do it!” and a mutual reminder about asking “Who would I be if I no longer believed anything were wrong?”) and later Don’s (“I don’t want to go, but I’ll support you in going”), my Aunt Ellen’s (“that would be fabulous!), and the Davidsons’ (one of the aforementioned dinner invitations; “go, go!!”), I began to decide to go.

By this time it was late afternoon Sunday, night-time in Israel. I called Naomi’s sister in Ohio to ask if she knew Naomi’s plans, and emailed Naomi to ask as well. And went to sleep. Monday morning I woke up to a very enthusiastic email from Naomi, which made me cry. OMG, I thought, I am going to do this!!

I was very nervous, and excited, but managed to meditate (more feelings to notice!) before I called the tour company, who told me it was too late, the tour was full, the logistics booked already. Period.

Well, by this time, I was sure I wanted to go, and it felt like it was supposed to happen. So I was incredulous. “Really?!” I said. The guy reluctantly agreed to check. I called back a while later to ask for the person my Aunt had worked with, and also to tell them why I was requesting this so last-minute (I hadn’t given the first guy my cancer sob story). While I was reluctant to “play the cancer card,” it was actually a big part of the reason, and I realized that not only would the tour company have to be willing to do this, but all of the vendors they were working with would have to do them favors; they might as well have a good and true reason.

Well, long story slightly shorter, 5 days later and I am now en route. Since I started writing this I arrived in Chicago, made it through security, ate dinner, called my family in CA who are celebrating because my niece turns 14 today (a confluence not lost on either side of the continent) and my nephew, who’s gotten very interested in the politics of the middle east, turns 16 in 3 days; and boarded the plane. I’m not sure how much time I will have to write while I’m in Israel, but I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say!