Sunday, December 5
Don had breakfast - a serving of Irish oatmeal with maple syrup
and soy milk - without nausea. He also had a banana, tea, and
a fistful of supplements. Maybe the nausea thing is behind us.
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Monday, December 6
Don called me at work with the news about his blood counts.
"I talked to Lynn," he said, meaning Dr. Peterson's nurse.
"Have we met her before?"
"I spoke to her," I said, "but I don't know if you have."
"She said she's met me. Wow, what a helpful person!"
"Yes, I thought so, too, when I talked to her about your blood
tests."
"She said my white blood cells were at 3.8, and the normal range
is 4 to 11. My baseline was 4.7."
"So, you're very close to being in range, and were low to begin
with."
"Yes. She said they'd keep an eye on it."
"Good. What did she say about your platelettes and red blood
cells?"
"Oh. I didn't ask her that. I was interested in the effects on
my bone marrow and immune system. I'll call her back and ask
her."
"Mention the nausea, too," I said.
He called back about five minutes later to say that his platelettes
were at 200 now, fallen slightly from a baseline of 212. He said
Lynn told him that some counts get as low as 100.
"I'm glad they're tracking it," I said, "because they affect your
blood clotting. Did you ask about the nausea?"
"Oh, gosh, I forgot. I'll call her again and ask her. But I
want to get this information to Broffman, too. He needs to know
what's going on with my immune system. Lynn said temodar doesn't
affect the blood cells as much as other chemos. Why is that?"
"I've just been re-reading what I found out on the web," I said.
"Apparently, temodar crosses the blood-brain barrier better than
other chemos." I read him the summary of what the Shering-Plough
representative told a BRAINTMR subscriber: 40% of the temodar
crosses the blood-brain barrier and gets delivered to the tumor,
so less of it is needed than other chemos. Plus it metabolizes
more quickly, not staying in the liver as long, and hence having
less time to affect other organs.
Don asked, "If it metabolizes faster, then how can it continue
to affect the bone marrow? I guess it's not the bone marrow
itself, but the stem cells - any rapidly-dividing cell."
"Right. It's as if your bone marrow were an automobile
assembly line, cranking out cars..."
"Like Explorers?" He knows I'm fond of the Ford Explorer,
and had one himself before we sold it this spring.
"Yeah, and a couple of Corvettes and a Volkswagen beetle or
two. Anyway, the temodar shuts down the production of chasses,
but you don't notice the drop off in cars until later on, when
they stop coming off the production line."
"That's a great metaphor! I'll try that one on Broffman."
He also asked me about the radioactive pellets Berger mentioned.
I told him I hadn't gotten anything off the web about them yet.
He said he appreciated the web searching I was doing. He wanted
all the information he could get before confronting the decision.
"Or else Berger will just zip right in there with his knife," he
joked.
"While riding by on a motorcycle," I said.
We agreed to meet for lunch, and when he arrived at Glyphic World
Headquarters, he and Brad and I went out to Sue's for Indian
buffet. Don loaded up his plate as usual, but finished only half
of what he took. He wanted to get a doggie bag, but I pointed
out that was not usually allowed at a buffet.
I'd been looking for my reading glasses all day. I knew I had
brought them home from the concert on Sunday because I remember
dropping the case as I got out of the car. I had looked on all the
usual surfaces at home - dining room table, dresser, desk - but still
couldn't find them. Not having them at work was giving me a
headache. At home that evening, I asked Don if maybe
I had asked him to carry them into the house since I had been
fumbling with my tuxedo and shoes. Could they have gotten into
one of his "valises"?
He dumped out the cloth bag he uses to carry his supplements.
They weren't in there. Then he looked through the paper bag
he's been carrying the copies of his collected poems in. He
said he didn't see them, and I looked through the bag, too, and
couldn't find them. I was getting a little alarmed.
"I just paid for those glasses!" I said. Money is tight this
month and I would hate to have to pay for another pair.
"Well, you know," Don said, "everything is somewhere."
"That's true but intangible," I said. "I was hoping for something
with a firmer ground in reality."
"Well," he said, "I regard reality as a palette." That cracked me up.
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Tuesday, December 7
While lying on the sofa with Don's feet propped in my lap,
I suddenly remembered where my glasses were. I got up, went
into the bedroom, and took a look, and found them right where
I'd put them. I returned in triumpth to the livingroom.
"Found them!" I announced.
"Oh, good," Don said. "So, where were they?"
"In my shoes, of course."
"Of course. It's just like I said," and then we repeated in
unison, "Everything is somewhere."
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Wednesday, December 8
Don's appointment with the Stanford Dermatology Clinic has
finally come around. His symptoms have greatly diminished,
reinforcing my belief that it is a Dilantin reaction, but they
are not so diminished that the doctors have nothing to look at.
The first doctor to take a look was Dr. Matthew Flynn. He
had many things to tell us:
"You have seborrheic dermititis. It is from your surgery, not the
Dilantin. We see it frequently with head trauma; it's extremely
common with spinal cord injuries. The good news is
that it's easy to treat. The bad news is that it's hard to cure.
It may be chronic.
"You and four million Americans have this problem. Yours is
worse. The upper back looks like it might be something different
[from the scalp, face, and chest]. It looks more like sunburn.
"In order to save you the time and effort of coming back to the
clinic, I'm going to prescribe enough for your scalp, face, and
back to last a while. Do not use the scalp or back medicines
on your face: it will cause thinning of the skin that may lead
to stretch marks.
"Use both the scalp medication and the shampoo [Nizorol, the same
thing I've been using for years and been encouraging Don to use
for a couple of months]. Put the shampoo on your scalp in the
shower and leave it there. Sing some songs - Irish ones are best,
of course - until the hot water runs out, then rinse it off."
Don has a fungal
infection on the toenails of his right foot. Dr. Flynn examined
them and wrote another prescription.
"The prescription lasts about three months,"
he said. "You'll use it and you'll look at your nails and think
I'm nuts, that it's not doing anything. But it will. It's just
that it takes the toenail about a year to grow out."
He explained that the fungus was in the nail, not just on it,
and that it grew into the nail about a quickly as the nail grew
out. "You won't
see the results until the nail has completely regrown."
He identified the fungal infection as Trichophytom rubrum.
By his apparent youth, I judged Dr. Flynn to be an intern or a
fellow in his early 30's. I was proved right when he said he was
going to fetch another doctor to have the final word.
Dr. Joseph McGuire saw us next, examining Don and checking Dr.
Flynn's observations with his own. I would guess Dr. McGuire to
be in his late 50's or early 60's. He had an amiable manner
plus a disposition to speak candidly that I've seen more often
in older doctors than in younger ones. The first thing he did
was examine Don's scalp. After picking at it lightly with his
fingernail he nodded and said, "Yep, that's a real mess."
"Dr. Flynn told us that you often see this kind of dermititis with
head trauma." I said. "I don't understand how that works. What
is the link?"
Dr. McGuire smiled. "You're not going to get it from me," he
said. "There does seem to be a link with Parkinson's. There've
been some theories, but no data."
Dr. Flynn added, "The doctor who first noticed the connection
hypothesized a substance, sebutonin, to explain it, but no one
has ever found it."
Dr. McGuire reinforced the necessity to keep the Nizorol on the
scalp "for thirty minutes" to ensure it works.
They took some scrapings from Don's toenails to grow in culture.
If it proves to be Trichophytom rubrum, they'll give Don
an additional prescription. Dr. Flynn wanted to make certain
there would be no interaction with the temozolomide first, though.
It'll take a week or more to grow the culture, so by then he
should have all the drug interaction information he needs to
make a prescription.
With that, our appointment was done. Don had five new
medications: an ointment for his back and chest, another for his
scalp, a third for his face, the Nizoral shampoo, and a tincture
to paint on his toenails twice a day. I was a little concerned
about his ability to apply these medications on a regular
schedule, but I've stopped being his medical alarm clock. I'll
mention it as often as I can remember, but I've backed off from
taking it on as a responsibility. Don is pretty much running his
own life now, and I enjoy that.
I returned to work and dropped Don at home. He was going to return
to Stanford later in the day. The plan was for him to meet a doctor
in the Medical Center cafeteria around 4:45. The two of them would
then drive to the ISHI holiday dinner in Corte Madera. The doctor
would also give him a ride back.
This dinner had been a bit of a thorn in our sides. I told Don when
the invitation first came that I thought it would be a good idea for
him to go, but that it would be unlikely I could get him there. The
problem was the same one it had been for the dinner before Mark
Rennecker's lecture. In order to make a 6:00 PM dinner in Corte Madera,
Don and I would have to leave Mountain View at 4:00. It doesn't usually
take two hours to get to Marin, but we would be traveling through The
City at the height of rush hour, and that would add at least 30 minutes
to our trip. I couldn't cut my work day short, so I was out of the
running as Don's driver.
Don explained this to someone who was coordinating the event. Unless
some other driver could be found, he would have to decline with regrets.
At first, no driver could be found. Don suggested Sara, but he was
told that "this was an ISHI event, for ISHI people," an explanation
he found unsatifactory. Sara had been a cook for ISHI events. Didn't
that count? "It's Rachel," he said, explaining there was friction
between Sara and her.
The next call he got said that I was invited
to the dinner as well, so maybe I could be his driver after all.
That made him angry.
"It's as if they think all they need to do is offer you free food and
you'll drop whatever you're doing," he said.
"Well," I said, "it's worked before."
But he was adamant. After a few more phone exchanges, a doctor at
Stanford who was "an ISHI person" and was going to the dinner was found,
and arrangements were made for him to pick Don up at the Stanford
Cafeteria. I told Don to take his cell phone with him in case something
went awry.
I got a call from Don around 5:00 PM. The doctor had not shown up.
"Do you want me to come pick you up?" I asked.
"I can catch the Margarite," he said. It was growing dark out and I
worried about his catching the right buses in the dark. He continued,
"Then I can get the 22 and walk home from El Camino."
"That's all good information," I said, "but it doesn't answer my question.
Do you want me to come a pick you up?"
"Well, of course, if it wouldn't put you out of your way, I'd like to
see you."
Evasive, but close enough to a "yes." "I'll see if Mark needs me," I
said and turned away from the phone.
Mark gave me the go-ahead, but when I returned to the phone, it was dead.
Don had hung up. Worse, he had turned off his cell phone so I couldn't
call him back.
I decided to go after him anyway, since I had said I would.
When I got to Stanford I searched the cafeteria but saw no sign of Don.
I called back to the office.
"Yes," Mark said, "Don called. He took the bus."
"I was afraid of that," I said.
"I told him to leave his phone on so you could call him back."
"Thanks," I said and hung up. I called Don's cell phone and he answered.
He apologized about the misunderstanding. We decided to make the best of
it and meet at Hobee's on El Camino near Arastadero. He should get there
by bus about as quickly as I could by car, though he had a three mile
head start.
We had a pleasant meal, and over dessert (which we shared) he explained
what had happened.
"Whenever someone offers to do something for me," he said, "I try to
think of the effect on the whole universe of time and effort. If I think
it will cost the other person more in time and effort than the time and
effort they will save me, I decline."
"That's an awful big calculation to try and carry out by yourself,"
I said.
"Exactly. I should just accept that you're an adult and you wouldn't be
making the offer if you didn't think it was worth it for you. Instead
of doing all that adding up, I should just answer the question, 'Do you
want me to come and get you?'"
"I'll make you a deal," I said. "I'll take care of all the calculations
on my side of the universe, and you do all the ones on your side."
"Deal."
When we got home, we discovered why the doctor hadn't picked him up in
the cafeteria. The dinner is Wednesday, December 15, not today,
December 8.
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Thursday, December 9
I started the day with a trip to my therapist. We talked
about the permanence of love and how I felt about my
relationship with Don and how I might feel if he were
to die. I said, "No matter what happens, I know someone
loves me, and I'll always know that. That can't be taken
away."
We agreed that I was over the initial crisis mode that had
me seek his help, and we agreed to cut our visits down to
once a month.
When I got to work, I thanked Mark for his help with Don
last night.
"No problem," he said.
"When he called back, I told him you had gone to look for
him, and he said, 'Well, I hope he can find me. I'm on a
bus.'"
We agreed that this was a genuine "Don moment."
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Friday, December 10
Today is the "festival of appointments." Our first is for me
at 10:30. I'm finally going to get to see Dr. Lane, my G.P.,
after nearly two years of seeing only his back-up, Dr. Whistler.
Then, at 11:00, Don sees Dr. Peterson, he gets his second blood
draw afterwards, then at 2:00 PM he sees Dr. Hancock.
We got to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in plenty of time (it
was in their new location and there were plenty of people trying
to help us find our way), but Dr. Lane was, as usual, backed up.
When I still hadn't been seen by 10:45, I approached the desk
and was about to ask for another appointment when my name was
called. I went to the examining room and had my blood pressure
taken (120/60 - a little high for me), and then the nurse said to
wait for Dr. Lane, who was in the middle of giving a pediatric
physical.
"I'm sorry," I said, "but I cannot wait. I have to take my
partner to an eleven o'clock appointment at Stanford. Can we
reschedule?"
We were able to get me another appointment for Monday, so Don and
I left for Peterson's. We were only a few minutes late. I knew
that Peterson herself would not be very late because I had been
told she had a lecture or paper to give at noon.
Indeed, we waited less than five minutes. Don's vitals were
taken: 136 lbs., blood pressure 94/62. I remarked that that
was unusually low for him. I told him my blood pressure had
been unusually high.
"Maybe we switched in the night," he said.
"Well, we did swap sides of the bed," I said.
Dr. Peterson came in and introduced her nurse, who was not the same person
who was with her last time. Like Prados, she has two nurses. Don retold
the story of when he called Jane and got Margaretta. When he asked for
Jane, Margaretta told him, "Oh, we're the same thing."
Dr. Peterson asked if Don had seen a dermatologist. Don said he had and
told her that they attributed the dermititis to his craniotomy. "They
said they see it all the time," he said.
"Really?" she said. "I've never seen it." Then she began her interview:
Peterson: So, you're on temodar now?
Don: Yes.
P: Have you experienced any fatigue?
D: Some, but not serious.
P: Constipation?
D: No. There was some transient nausea.
Lou: It occurred in the morning, at breakfast.
D: They gave me Zofran to take care of it.
(Actually, the nausea occured a few days after he took the
temodar, so he wasn't taking the Zofran then.)
P: Did you have the MRI in November because of new symptoms, or
was it just time for a new MRI?
D: It was just time.
P: Good.
D: The MRI showed an area that might be active tumor,
but it might just be necrosis. Apparently, it's hard to tell
the difference.
P: There are some techniques that can tell the difference.
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In 90% of the cases,
it can tell the difference.
L: We were thinking of doing that if the next MRI is still
ambiguous.
P: We can do that here.
L: Really? We were told the place to do it was UCLA.
P: No, we have the equipment here. It's pretty standard. They
have it at UCSF, too.
L: Great.
P: (to Don) How do you spend your days?
D: I work in the garden. And I've been working on a collection of poems,
my poems. I'm going to self-publish them.
P: That's marvelous.
D: And I'm a consultant to a non-profit I used to work for in
Bolinas. I scan internet media sites for news items about cancer
research or new therapies and send it out by e-mail as a kind of
clipping service.
P: So, you're busy.
D: Yes.
P: And you're alone during the day?
D: Well (gestures towards Lou), we live together.
P: And you're dressing yourself?
D: Yes. If I put something on backwards or inside out, Lou tells
me.
L: Notice the shoes.
(Don lifts up his feet, which are shod in gardening togs instead
of shoes.)
P: Well, as usual, they sent me the new MRIs with nothing to
compare them to.
L: We brought the rest with us.
(Dr. Peterson seemed surprised at this, though I had told the
receptionist at the front desk to tell her about them in case she
wanted to see them. She got out the set from the previous scan and
looked at them.)
L: I'm going to have the rest of the set duplicated so you
won't have this problem again.
P: Do you have plans for Christmas? Having friends and family over?
D: No, but we had lots of people over for Thanksgiving.
P: Do you have family, other than Lou?
D: My brother might come for a visit. I'm not close to my Dad
or sister. Lou has thought up a ceremony we're going to have tomorrow
at noon, December 11. That's the anniversary of the hemorrhage.
L: People from all over the United States and even in India
will be joining us. We're going to meditate and pray for an
hour.
P: I'll remember that tomorrow. Well, you look great and you
sound good.
D: Thanks.
Dr. Peterson did an abbreviated physical, watching him walk
across the room and looking into his eyes.
P: So, other than the chemo and the Zofran, you're off drugs?
D: Yes. It's so great.
P: How's your weight.
D: 134?
L: 136.
P: What was it before?
D: It fluctuated between 134 and 144.
P: So, it's on the low side of normal.
D: Yes.
P: I guess we've agreed I should see you every other month.
L: Is monthly OK?
P: Sure.
(As Peterson seemed to be bringing the interview to a close -
it was nearly noon - I interjected a few questions.)
L: Will your labs be holding regular hours the week leading
up to Christmas?
Nurse: Yes.
L: Don's next blood draw, after today, is scheduled for the 17th.
In order to fit in with UCSF's holiday schedule, they want a
blood count and blood chemistry on the 21st so they can give
the go-ahead for the next round of temodar. Does it make any
sense to do a blood count on the 17th and then again on the
21st?
P: No. Assuming that today's CBC is okay, draw again on the
21st and skip the 17th.
L: He has a standing order for blood count.
Will we need new orders for blood chemistry?
Nurse: We'll take care of that.
As she left, Peterson had one more comment: "I agree that the
MRI looks worrisome. We'll write Prados's office to request
an MRI spectroscopy in January. That should give us more
information."
Don and I waited over twenty minutes in the hemotology lab.
Apparently, having a standing order puts you on the "back
burner," and patients with doctor's orders in hand get their
blood drawn first. I took the MRIs down to radiation
therapy while Don waited, then returned.
The waiting room filled and emptied twice
before Don's name was finally called.
He was in the room with the nurse only a short time when he
motioned for me to join him.
"They have the wrong orders," he told me. "They were going
to do a Dilantin level check, not a blood count. The nurse
is on the phone trying to straighten it out now."
"How did you find out?" I asked.
"He told me. 'So, this is a Dilantin level, right?'"
"It's a good thing he checked."
It has been less than a week since the National Academy released
their report on medical errors. I could hear the nurse talking
on the phone to the person on the other end. "No," he was saying,
"no Dilantin level. He's not on Dilantin anymore. Throw that
one away. Just CBC. No. Throw that one out. Just send me the
CBC order. Yes. There were two standing orders. One for
Dilantin, one for CBC. Yes. Just throw it away. No, the one
for Dilantin."
I decided we'd double check next time, whether or not the
phlebotomist did.
We still had one more appointment to go: Dr. Hancock in Radiation
Oncology. But we had plenty of time, so we decided to have
lunch at Max's Opera Cafe in the Universal Shopping Hospital.
We've enjoyed lunch there before, but this was the first time
it's actually lived up to its name. We got to hear several of
the waiters sing opera and show tunes as we ate.
The woman who was acting as hostess was at the mike when Don
suddenly stopped eating. He was listening very intently. Tears
started to fill his eyes. He looked up at me. "That's our song,
isn't it?" he asked.
And then tears filled my eyes, too. I reached out and took his
hand. "Yes," I said, barely able to get the words out. "Yes,
it is."
It was "Con Te Partiro (Time to Say Good-Bye)." I had first heard
a recording of this by Andrea Bocelli two Christmases ago, while
windowshopping with David Meddars in Union Square. I was so taken
with the recording that I bought it right away and played it
endlessly, especially the duet with Sara Brightman.
And I now remembered when I first played it for Don. We were lying
in bed after one of our rare weekends together at my house. "There's
a song I want to play for you," I told him. "I think of it as our
song. The title is 'Time to Say Good-bye,' though why it's called
that I don't know. The title in Italian means, 'I will go with you.'
I like that, because that's how I feel. Anywhere you go, I want to
go with you."
Then I played it for him. He liked it, too, and said it was a good
song for us.
But that had been way back in the autumn of 1998, before the hemorrhage,
before the cancer, before the brain surgery and the radiation and
two rounds of chemotherapy.
But he remembered. He remembered what our life together had been,
and how much promise it had held. And in that remembering, he brought
it all forward in time, and cancelled a year of pain and uncertainty.
Here we were, these two lovers, holding
hands and crying while they were playing our song.
We finished lunch in plenty of time to make our appointment with Hancock,
but had a devil of a time getting out of the Universal Shopping Hospital
parking lot. There was gridlock everywhere we turned. We
finally decided the quickest way out was to go the long
way around, which I did. As we reached the top of the El
Camino off-ramp, I stopped for a pedestrian. It wasn't until
after he had passed that I realized it was my therapist, Scott
Granett.
Because we were late, I dropped Don off and went to find parking.
I felt badly about this since Don had expressed a fear of going
back to "that place" again alone. But I didn't want him to miss
his appointment.
As it was, we waited in an examining room for nearly half an
hour. It was long enough for me to worry about where I had
parked, which was a permit-only area. I asked Don for some
quarters and returned to the garage, where I moved the car to
a meter. I also picked up Don's backpack and fanny pack, one
of which contained a letter from one of Don's doctor friends,
asking him to convey his greetings to Dr. Hancock. I like that
Don's friends have this subtle way of communicating to Don's
doctors the message that this is someone special they're dealing
with.
Don was being interviewed by Dr. Williams, a resident, when I
returned. He did the standard physical, including asking Don
about his appetite. Then he went to fetch Dr. Hancock, who
joined us shortly. Don gave him the Reike letter before the
examination began, and Dr. Hancock said he remembered Dr. Reike.
Then he begain the interview:
Hancock: So, you went off Thalidomide.
Don: Yes. While I was getting the radiation treatment, I
started to get a burning sensation, which might have been
neuropathy. So I went off it.
(Since this was the story of Don's first round of Thalidomide, I
thought I ought to jog his memory:)
Lou: Tell him when you went back on.
D: I went back on it until I started the temozolomide.
H: Your weight is down a little. Are you on a macrobiotic diet?
D: No. What do you think of combining the temozolomide with
Thalidomide?
H: I'm not the right person to ask about that. There's not
enough data on it, so it's anyone's guess. Do you have any
new symptoms?
D: No.
H: When is your next scan?
D: November. No, wait - January.
H: Planning any more exotic trips?
D: Yes, in February.
H: Where to?
L: We're going back to Hawaii.
D: We don't have anything else planned, except to San Jose.
H: That's pretty exotic this time of year.
Dr. Hancock then proceded with a physical exam, including
the macarena test and
thumping various limbs with a small rubber mallet.
H: The scan is a little questionable in one area. I guess the
only thing to inquire about is if there's progression with
temodar. In that case,
the area is small enough it could be treated with radiosurgery.
D: I thought I'd had the maximum dose.
H: Yes, it's pretty maxed.
This is a single high dose, through tightly focused
beams. It's done with a metal frame screwed to your head
[to keep the head fixed and the beams in place].
It's like a bad day at the dentist's.
L: Is this what they call gamma knife?
H: Gamma knife refers to a specific kind of equipment.
We use a linear accelerator here at Stanford, not a branded name.
But don't worry. You won't glow in the dark.
D: Darn!
L: We could use a night light.
H: A PET scan could be advised, too, to distinguish tumor from
necrosis.
L: What about radioactive pellets as a treatment?
H: The data on pellets is not overwhelmingly great. And it
usually requires a pretty silent area for treatment.
L: "Silent"? Is that as opposed to "eloquent"?
H: Yes. It usually means people do well without it. Whack out
a temporal lobe, for instance, and they're okay.
We then all shook hands and wished each other happy holidays.
Don and I were most of the way down the corridor on our way
to the escalators when I heard someone calling out, "Mr. Flint!"
It was Dr. Williams, chasing after us with the MRI folder in
his hands. "You left this behind," he said.
I'm getting as bad as Don. We really need to get
those damned things duplicated.
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Saturday, December 11
Don and I started the day off right: in bed. When we finally got
up, I fixed him blueberry pancakes, which were quite a surprise
since blueberries were out of season. I had come across a carton
of them I had stashed in the freezer this summer and forgotten about.
It wasn't until I was cleaning out all the Thanksgiving leftovers that
I came across it again. They were delicious.
Afterwards, we performed the ceremony of thanksgiving and hope I
had put together.
We sat on cushions in the livingroom, facing a pan of simmering
water scented with clove, orange, and cinnemon.
Two blocks of beeswax were melting in a cup that sat in the
water. Beside the pan was a candle mold, ready to receive
the wax. As we sat down, I laid out two sheets of fresh
beeswax imprinted with hexagons. I tore each sheet in half,
giving us each two pieces.
"The way this ritual works is this," I said. "For the first
fifteen minutes, we give thanks. We think of the things we're
thankful for this year, and we hold them in our minds. Then
we think of those things as we hold the sheet of wax, and fold
them up in it. Then we put the folded sheet in the cup, where
it joins the rest of the wax. When all the wax has
melted, we pour it into the candle mold.
"We do the same thing the next fifteen minutes, but this time
we think of our hopes and all the hopes we have for the coming
year. And we put them into the wax, and we pour the wax into
the candle.
"And we think of all the friends and family who are meditating
with us during this time, and all their hopes and thanks and
wishes going into the wax as well.
"Then, in days to come, when we light the candle, we'll
release all those hopes and all that thanks and it will
fill the house and our lives."
Don thought this was a beautiful ceremony. We burned
frankincense on a charcoal brickette as well, and the house
became a heady mixture of scents: the faint honey of the
melting beeswax, the spices of the simmering water, and the
rich formality of the frankincense.
It took an hour to melt and pour all the wax. We sat the entire time,
side by side, silent on the cushions, holding hands.
Afterwards, we had a light snack, then did some shopping in San Jose.
I had found a store on the Internet that sold mica shade lamps for
a price far below any I had seen in other stores, and I had looked
everywhere from Restoration Hardware on the high end to Lamps Plus
on the low end. The store was in the Willow Glen area, so we got to
explore that charming neighborhood. The store itself, Willow Glen
Kitchen and Bath, specializes in Arts and Crafts decore. The man
running the store was chatty, almost voluable, but quite a source of
information. His wife, who was running the computer, was an odd duck.
She seemed surely, even cross, as if having customers in the store were
an unwanted distraction.
I saw the lamp I wanted and fell in love with it. Seeing how much I
wanted it, Don decided to buy it on the spot. "Merry Christmas," he
said. What a guy!
We had lunch at a pizzaria on Lincoln, then entered a curio shop on
our way back to the car. Don needed a $7 gift for a "gift exchange"
at the dinner on Wednesday. He was going to just look around, but
I went up to the counter, which was staffed by two rather pretty
young women, and said, "We need a seven dollar gift."
They were a bit taken aback, but amused by the "challenge" of finding
something suitable at that price in their store. What they finally
came up with was unique and elegant: a small case made from polished
mother-of-pearl.
We had originally thought of seeing the Schola Cantorum tonight,
but when we returned to Mountain View, I didn't feel like driving all
the way back down to Saratoga for the concert. Their second concert,
tomorrow night, will be in Palo Alto. That will work into our
shopping and party plans much more smoothly. Besides, it will make
December 12, 1999, much more like the original December 12 we'd planned
for 1998.
Better late than never.
|
A Ceremony of Thanksgiving
and Hope
|
