Being in the Now

Not to “dis” Eckhart Tolle, or to pretend to know something that he doesn’t, but I am getting slightly annoyed hearing people talk all of the time about, “Being in the Now.”  Where else would we be anyway?  I get the point:  We spend much of our “now” mulling over the past or worrying about. or anticipating the future, so it is supposed to be a radical leap to actually experience the present.  But I think we end up using- “I am not in the now,”  to worry about the present too.  In effect, we are not only anticipating future unwanted outcomes, we are also quite sure that our present is somehow lacking because while we are in it, we are sure that we are not.

I think there are more useful distinctions:  two of them I have been practicing with lately are Being and experiencing.  Today, I am home with my dogs.  Dogs are all “Being.”  They don’t really have a doing bone (pardon the pun) in their body- maybe they should be called Canine Beings, since humans don’t seem to do such a great job, in general, of honoring the title of Being.  When I am away from my dogs, I want to be with them, when I am with them, at home, I wonder what I should be doing.  Today I thought, “there is nothing more important than my being.”  Easier said than done.  Am I earning my ‘keep’ if I am not doing something?  Isn’t there something I SHOULD be doing?

I am strongly drawn to practices that have as their outcome an experience of being and of experiencing itself.  Yoga, for example- and not just any yoga, but types of yoga that include breath work, meditation and kinesthetic “checking-in.”  My favorite yoga:  Babaji Kriya yoga has a kriya phase after each asana, where you lay in a semi Savasana pose, consciously experiencing the sensations inside of your body.   On the DVD I found on Amazon, the yoga leader says that the kriya phase allows the mind/body shift that is the purpose of each asana, to occur.  It feels very yin, feminine and healing.  It is a Being practice and I love it.

Yoga itself is a Being practice, but Westerners can turn anything into a competition (even with ourselves) and yoga is no exception.  We have hot yoga, power yoga, pilates yoga.  I guess 3000 years of a Science from the most Spiritually enlightened people on the planet might have gotten it wrong and the benefit of adding a good dose of Type A behavior in the midst of what is meant to be a way to get the body ready to handle Divinity cannot be overlooked.  If you aren’t sweating, you might find God, but will you have suffered enough to deserve the meeting?  Or, if you are interested in such things, will you want to meet God at all?  After all, once that moment comes, every other acquisition has to pale- and that’s no fun.

Being an Experiencer.   A colleague of mine says about the work that we do that it is about being an Experiencer.  The moment I heard it, I understood that aspect of my work in a new way.  Humans are not only challenged at Being, we also, passed maybe toddler age, have traded experiencing for conceptualizing.  Now I sound dangerously like Eckhart Tolle, but I must say that I get that distinction for myself, though I often have trouble translating it.  In the training I sometimes ask people to think about their favorite type of food and a restaurant where they can depend on that food being delicious.  I ask them to imagine that food so that their mouth is watering with the anticipation of having it.  For me, it used to be steak, medium rare, with butter on top, even better.  Now I am a vegan and am more likely to crave kale salad with lemon and sesame seeds, but that is a story for another time.  Anyway, I ask them to imagine walking up to the restaurant, seeing the item on a menu behind glass and instead of going in to have the item, they lick the glass that is covering the menu.  As they say in Eastern philosophy, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon,” so the metaphor only goes so far.  Still, if you imagine as I have invited you to, there is an experience, is there not, of what a concept is?

To experience consciously, must be a human exclusive.  Other animals experience, but do they know they are experiencing?   Is there a distinction between Being and experiencing?  If I am fully experiencing something, do I need anything else?  Is there an anything else to need in that moment or is a need a lapse in fully experiencing what I have now, or how I am being, or what is going on in my body, mind, etc.?

In this moment I am feeling into my body.  There are sensations that I can label or let be.  There are sounds coming from the kitchen where my dog is drinking water.  The vibration, the music (even that a label) comes and goes.  Air passes my nose, slightly cold and my chest expands.  I let myself be breathed because it doesn’t need my help and I wonder if nothing really does.   If I can get out of the way, the universe will do what it knows to do and I can simply listen.  I can allow it to move me when it wants to and surrender when it pauses to listen for what wants to be.  I can lay down between asanas and let my mind/body connections reshape themselves into new circuitry for finding God.  And if, in this lifetime, I don’t find God, I can let that be too.

Letting Go

I am not a fan of letting go of things.  Although I am compelled by Eastern Spiritual paths in general, I never felt drawn to Buddhism because of the idea of non-attachment (and the idea that all suffering is caused by attachment).  I like to be attached.  Isn’t attaching a phase of development for a mother and her child?  Doesn’t it wreak havoc if that stage isn’t successfully navigated?   When I read the work of Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Buddhist writers and lecturers who introduced the idea of healthy attachment, I felt more at home.  Attachment may cause suffering (since on earth everything dies and entropy is the only certain thing), but it is a suffering that is well worth it, as far as I’m concerned.

As I write this, my dog Nandi comes and puts his front paws on my lap.  He is attached.  When I pack for a business trip, he knows it and attempts entry into various suitcases.  When turned away, he hangs his head.  Ask anyone who has a dog.  They know when we are leaving.  I am attached to him too.  If/when anything happens to him, I will be heartbroken.  It is in the fabric of my loving him that the pain of his loss is being sown. 

I also have a slight problem letting go of things:  As we speak, my bathroom counter is “decorated” with various skin ointments, travel-sized amenities brought home from hotels, make-up that I haven’t used in awhile, “but might.”  I threw away some similar items when I started this decluttering project a few weeks ago, but some either never made it to the trash can, or cycled back onto the counter for reasons unknown even to myself.  To make matters worse,  there have been various times in my life when I have thrown something out finally, only to find that I could use it more than ever weeks after the trash truck has disappeared down my street, the item nested in other discarded and unwanted things.  I don’t have a good track record with the business of letting go.

To get even more personal:  My father’s ashes are on the mantle over my gas fireplace and Samadhi’s ashes,  next to them, were sealed into a small flower-covered metal box after I failed to pick something more manly.  Even in my letting go, I tend to want to hold on to something.

I have heard that letting go of things clears the space for new things, a kind of Spiritual path, but it seems like a vicious cycle to me – just more things to have a hard time letting go.  I have toyed with the idea of paring everything down to only the essentials- what I truly “need”  in each category.  It seems like a good idea in theory, but I think we know where that is headed, given the bathroom experiment.  And I fantasized one day about creating a wardrobe that was nun-like in austerity & lack of complexity.   I could sense the savings in energy expenditure if I didn’t have to think at all when I went into my closet.  A few days later, I bought a fair amount of new clothes including some new rather bold colored pants.  It seems that along with the resistance to letting go, I might also resist sameness.  My journey into simplicity appears doomed.

To be fair to myself, and to paint an accurate picture, I will say that I have made some impressive strides:  A few months ago, I gave away bags of clothing, there were a couple of small trash cans full of bathroom items that did make it to the disappearing trash truck and I sold furniture in an estate sale for one of my foreclosed homes that I had wanted to hang onto (now that I think of it, houses are something I have found a way to let go).  Today, my ex-husband came and took a fountain from my backyard and beautiful flower vases that I still love, but have no good use for.  I felt a slight tug. a feeling of remorse that was  premature and for a few minutes debated with myself in front of him about my willingness to let the fountain go, but in the end, it too disappeared. 

I realize as I write this that I actually like the feeling of having let something go, a practice in surrender with something tangible.  I guess it is the decision process that I have a hard time with. 

There is a part of a poem by Mary Oliver that I have loved since I read it (after the death of my father, when I read grief memoirs and poetry because I had to hear real and raw things):

To live in this world

You must be able

To do three things:

to love what is mortal

to hold it

 

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

 

Mary Oliver,  In Blackwater Woods

 

On earth it could be argued that everything is mortal

and therefore someday will have to be let go.

Perhaps it isn’t the make up I might someday use that gives me pause at the bathroom sink after all:  maybe it is a sort of holding on of anything I have used or that has been a part of me, because those things are evidence that I am here and a suggestion that I will still be here tomorrow.  Maybe any letting go foretells the ultimate letting go, someday, even of ourselves.  The breadcrumbs we follow to the final Spiritual earth lesson are the things we throw away or emotionally release. 

Then, the things we finally hold onto,  Samadhi’s ashes, my father’s, various other earth- strings, reflect what we value most, what we are most attached to.  The things that will remain at least until we are gone and then will be in another person’s decision making hands.  The breadcrumbs we have left behind for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epiphany

I don’t know what I was doing today; I think I was cleaning the kitchen, when it popped into my head, “I want to be your muse.”  It felt like a revelation at the moment it happened.  I wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular- I was speaking to everyone, I was speaking to you.  I suppose it partly addresses the purpose of this blog and also of the work I do in the seminar room.  I feel called to be a conduit, a channel for people’s true longings, soul- callings.  I call it “your Samadhi,” in honor of my dog who died almost exactly a year ago from Lymphoma.

When Samadhi was diagnosed with Lymphoma, (I remember the exact words spoken to usher in the sudden, radical change in direction that life was about to take- Me to his veterinarian, Elena, “Hi, how are you?”  Elena to me, “I’m fine, but your dog isn’t.  He has Lymphoma.”) we were told that it wasn’t curable, but it was possible to get it into remission.  That would give him approximately two years to live. If you don’t have dogs, you will likely not exactly understand the rest of this story.  If you think of a dog as a “pet” or even worse as an accessory, to be changed with the seasons, it will not make sense to you that at that moment, my baby was just given a death sentence.  Michael, my boyfriend, was with me.  Did we start crying?  Did we go into a professional doing mode, attempting control in a  situation that we had anything but?

I don’t have children.  I chose not to for many reasons, although at one time I thought I would have them.  Samadhi was as close to my first born as I will ever have.  I think all dog lovers will insist that their dog is not “just a dog.”  They have personalities as unique as a snowflake to an Eskimo.  Samadhi was a red and white Boston Terrier who stole the heart of everyone who saw him.  He had a keen sensitivity to my moods and an unquenchable appetite for fetching.  He was a brave boy who went through a year of chemotherapy without so much as a whimper, but would hide behind my legs under the chair in the veterinarian’s office when the doctor walked in.  His bark sounded like the raspy voice of an old man who had smoked all of his life. He loved water- every summer I would buy him a kiddie pool and immediately after walks, as soon as his leash was off, he would run through the doggie door and jump into the pool, splaying his body out like a frog, then jump out and run around the house rolling his wet body on the carpet and up against the couch to get dry again.  Michael said that when I went out of town on business trips, Samadhi spent most of his time in the front room on the couch waiting for me to come home, even though most of my trips lasted almost a week.  He was a mama’s boy and I was definitely a boy’s mama.

We were given medical advice by someone who was supposed to be one of the top dog oncologists in the United States that might very well have led to Samadhi’s death.  It was an unfortunate “mistake” that was borne of fear, lack of knowledge, a built- in urgency and the need to depend on “experts” with very little room for error.  A therapist  I went to after my father was killed said, “The universe is not always gentle with mistakes.”

The mistake in this case was that the top oncologist only visited our city once a month and so the chemotherapy treatment was set for once a month.  The common protocol is chemotherapy every week for the first three weeks, at least, if the blood-work indicates that the dog can handle it.  So, although it seemed that after the first treatment, Samadhi was indeed heading towards remission, by the time he got his second treatment, the cancer had gotten a foothold again and had begun to become resistant to the chemicals.

Early in the treatment, before it was clear that no chemical was going to make a difference, the doctor told me that if we could get Samadhi into remission, there was a trial program that had just started at a major university where they were doing stem cell transplants for dogs with Lymphoma and that it had a 50% success rate in CURING dogs.  Did you see that word, CURING?  Not everyone could get into the program, because it was still in it’s experimental phase, but he could get us in, because of who he was.  IF, we could get Samadhi into remission.  At the word “curing,”  tears ran down my face, my throat tightened and my heart ached.  My boy.  Cured.  A miracle.  I had wanted to be the recipient of a miracle of this magnitude for awhile.  For me it was a doorway into knowing there was something more than I could see.  I was raised by a scientist, an actual member of the Skeptical Society (my Dad)  This was as good a time as any for that miracle to occur.  Okay, so it wasn’t the spontaneous healing sort of miracle that I still could have passed off as coincidence anyway, but I wasn’t going to get picky right now.  “How much does it cost,”  I asked through choked tears?  “$100.000,”  the doctor said,  his glasses resting halfway down his nose in a sort of half comic, half expert stance.

The first thought that went through my head, which I am clear was not my own, but rather my conditioning talking for me, was, “it’s a dog.”  The implication being that no one in their right mind (unless they happened to have a disposable $100,000.00 laying around haphazardly) would spend that amount of money on a 50/50 chance of curing their dog.  The next thought (this one my very own) was:  “How am I going to handle this?”  And I began to plan the sure path to my dogs full recovery.  As the Yiddish proverb states, , “Man plans, God laughs.”  You already know the ending to this story.

I realized something after he died (which is a post in itself- a Spiritual heart-wrenching day that I will probably never forget)- that one of the things Samadhi taught me was what it really means to have a vision and a purpose.  I felt my fight for him in my body, my solar plexus, my heart, my cells.  I would have done anything to save him.  And that, I understand now, is a soul-calling.  And today I realized that I want to be a muse for you, for the world. What calls to me is to be a catalyst for people to find their deepest, truest longings.  And then to fight for them, as if the world is depending upon it.  Because it just might be.

What is your Samadhi?

Spiritual Cleansing

A month after my father died, I went to his house for the first time.  Before that, I couldn’t bear to see the things that would remind me of his living.  I didn’t even want to pass the street where he lived and ultimately died.  The idea that I would see the place where his life was taken felt like purposely meeting a wound with fire.  If we had to pass the street for some reason,  I would turn my head, like a child hiding behind it’s hands believing that no one knows it’s there.

It is strange what breaks your heart:  his slippers by the bed, one on it’s side because he was in a hurry to go move his car out of the garage where they were painting new stripes.  He had forgotten the night before when he came home from singing at a nightclub where an old friend sang and played piano.  The blankets and sheets turned down in a triangle where his body slept his last night on earth.  His briefcase lying on the far side of the bed, a briefcase he had had for years, which he used to carry his student’s papers.  The night before, before going to the nightclub, he had taught a class at Los Angeles Valley College, the second class of the semester.   Inside of the briefcase, a roll call sheet, dates filled in with pencil in his own handwriting, hauntingly recording future days that now were irrelevant to the man who wrote them.

In the living room, a flyer that announced OCTOBER 8, GARAGE PAINTING.  ALL CARS  MUST BE MOVED. It was on the way, walking back from moving his car,  so the new stripes could be painted, (woken up too early in the morning by the association manager, Cookie, he was still groggy and barefoot), when he was nearly across the street again,  inches from this particular story never being told, that a man in a Toyota Camry hit him going 35 miles an hour, according to the police report.

I can still remember the sound that came out of me when I found that paper.  I was alone in his house, uninhibited by what my pain might do to someone else, I didn’t so much scream/howl/keen, as I was screamed/howled and keened.  There are animals, besides humans, who mourn for their dead.  Whales I believe and elephants.  I picture myself now, looking back, as a whale half beached on the shore, or an elephant alone in the moonlight on the African plains, wailing with a pain that has no hope of lessening.

My husband, at the time, and I, stayed at my dad’s home for awhile.  We had to clean out his things, box them up, decide what to keep, what to give away.  It was a ritual that allowed the grieving to come to the surface and be felt.  A ritual of mourning, like wearing black for a year, or covering mirrors.

I took lots of showers and craved them, feeling like somehow I was washing something old away and making the possibility of something new again.  I almost felt as if I could undo what had happened if I stood there long enough, made the water hot enough, stronger, used the right cleanser.  Outside of the shower, these things seemed ridiculous.  Clearly, life as I had known it was over.  There would never be a moment without this pain, without this grief, without this life where everything was about a solitary loss.  I didn’t even want there to be.  The price it seemed, for great love.

I also loved doing laundry.  How does one explain these simple things that felt like soothing dressing to third degree burns?  The smell of the Bounce dryer sheets, which my father touched with his own hands, the warmth of the clothes as I put them up to my face, the sound of the dryer tossing things in the air, the way fate had.  Cleaning things.

Soon after he died, I read a book called, “Here If You Need Me.”  It is by a woman who was a chaplain for the Forestry Department.  She is mostly called in when someone is missing and they don’t know how it will turn out.  It starts as a memoir about those experiences:  some that turn out well, some that don’t.  In the course of the story, her husband is killed.  I forget quite how.  He is a policeman or a sheriff, but I think he dies in a traffic accident.  She says that she knows it has to be her that cleans his body and gets him ready for burial.  Do I remember that she is frightened?  I’m not sure, but when I read it, I wished that I had done that, wished it was part of our culture, wished I had thought of it, had the guts to do it.  I didn’t even see him after he died.  A representative at the hospital told me I didn’t want to see him that way, remember him that way. I don’t regret not seeing him, but I do regret that I wasn’t the one (or one of the ones) to prepare him to be cremated.   That the last hand that touched him, wasn’t a hand that had loved him all of her life.

Beginning

I suppose the first thing to do would be to introduce myself to you.   This isn’t an easy thing, what do I include and what do I leave out?  A few days ago, at my uncle Frankie’s memorial, my cousin, his daughter, asked, “Can a daughter ever really know her father, or does she only know what he lets her see?”  I wonder this even about myself.

First, the easy part:  I am 49 years old, live in a house I own with 3 dogs.  I love dogs, everything about them.  What I do for a living is travel the world and facilitate people uncovering their blind spots to living an extraordinary life, what I often refer to as ‘a life without regret.’  I can’t imagine more rewarding work and I have been doing it for 23 years.

I am a budding photographer.  I love photography for many reasons:   It is poetry, meditation, Zen, art, a teacher.  I am sure I will write posts just about photography, but for now I will say that it teaches me that nothing will remain the way it is for very long.  The opportunity to capture a certain photograph sometimes lasts a second.  This is a very good thing to learn.

I love yoga.  Yoga is not exercise for me, it is a way to prepare myself for God.  I am not sure what I even think God is, but I am sure that God is worth preparing for.  I am a student of Bhakti Yoga, which means devotional yoga and devotion is my favorite state of being.  I learned the most about it while caring for my dog who had Lymphoma.  Everything I did, I did with love.  It was one of the most transforming experiences of my life.

I often feel like an artist trapped in a body full of inhibitions.   An artist to me means someone who has the boldness to say what they have to say in whatever medium they are using at the time.  I do it in my work, but in other areas, I am far too concerned with the ‘grades’ I might be getting from others.  I have felt a longing to write (prose, poetry, years ago, even songs), paint, draw, photograph, make ceramics and dance.   Each of these I have done at one time or another.  Still, I feel voices, impulses, colors, feelings, stopped inside of me.  Sometimes the volume is turned way down low.

I have a younger brother, Robert (I call him Buzz) who has been one of the favorite parts of my life for 41 years now.  His art is photography and he is one of the funniest people I know.  He takes care of my pups when I travel and loves them like they are his nieces and nephews, which he will never have in children form.

My mother is alive and lives in the same city that I do:  Las Vegas.  We have had, in the past, a complicated relationship, but now I am filled with only gratitude that she is still in my life.  She was the one that taught me to love art and to find out what bits of it lived inside of me.  I suppose I also learned fear from her in a way.

My father was killed almost 9 years ago (that amount of time having passed is surreal and doesn’t seem possible) when he was crossing the street and was hit by a car.  It was the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life and also very transforming.  He was one of the great loves of my life.  Some people don’t understand that when they hear it.  That is the cost of art.

I was married for 7 years and am soon to be divorced.  My ex and I are great friends.  A relationship that I have been  in for 3 years was just recently put “on hold.”  In 49 years, I have not figured out the art of sustaining an intimate relationship, but I am proud of the people I have loved and lived with.  I have had great, great loves.

If I could wish something for myself in the coming months, it would be discipline, boldness, Spiritual breakthroughs and radical self-discovery.   And so, I write not only for myself, but for anyone that could be helped in their own radical journeys and artistic ‘coming outs.’

 

Updates on Samadhi

I have a new appreciation for people who blog everyday, or even often.  Although I love writing, in theory, the practice of blogging can seem a bit overwhelming, especially when there are so many details and everything happens so fast.

We took Samadhi to a holistic vet.  In general, I have a healthy skepticism about Western medicine, which tends to treat the body as an organism that becomes diseased and then it is time to address it.  Michael found her on the internet and then she was independently recommended by two different people as “the holistic veterinarian” in Las Vegas.  Her next available appointment was a month away.  I would be in Taiwan.  Michael said he would take Samadhi, but I couldn’t imagine not being with him for such an important thing.  Like missing your child’s first dance recital, but in this case, with more weighty consequences.

My ex suggested that I call one of the women in our Spiritual community.  He said he thought she might have an “in” with said Doctor.  I called Murti (the definition of her name in Hindu is:  an image which expresses a divine Spirit) and left her a message.  Murti has a small dog that she has had for years and will understand immediately the gravity of the situation to me (unlike someone recently who told me- get a new dog)…….

A short while later there is a message from Murti on my voicemail.  She says that she has gotten me an appointment with the Doctor the next day at 2 p.m.  I am ecstatic.  Nothing is so comforting in a time of high anxiety as doors being opened, whether Divinely or humanly- and after all, how would God act but through us. In the message Murti leaves regarding the appointment, she says that she is grateful that she is able to do this.  I find the statement so touching that it is one of the things that inspires me to write a blog.  She is grateful?  I hear it in her voice and it opens a new door for me regarding giving.  She is doing me a favor- a big one- and she feels grateful.  I  have known her name for a long time.  Now I get the meaning.

Dr.Joanne Stefanatos, whose name I keep mispronouncing, is calm and comforting.  She keeps calling Samadhi brave, which in spite of myself makes me feel proud. (My father, when people asked him if he was proud of me, used to say, “No, that would imply I am responsible for her accomplishments.  I love my Dad!).

Holism (I am making that up) has it’s own set of very rigorous practices- another reason I decided to write the blog, as I decided that there wasn’t much, if anything,  I wouldn’t do to heal my dog, no matter how time consuming or financially stretching, and wondered what it would be like to live in that devotional way about everything.  First, Dr. S. prescribed holistic medicine- two bottles with droppers, two times a day.  Second, there was some ionic stabilizing fluid to put in Spring water that made it, what I label as Holy Water- I think it is alkaline balanced, but it could be more.  At this point I am not asking questions, other than, “how do I have my dog live?”  (Actually Dr. S said this when we first met- “any questions,” she asked and then, “How do you save your dog?”  Recognizing that our relationship was born of this and this only- a common commitment, one very personal and the other a kind of broad mission.  Third, a list of foods that can and can’t be eaten.  “Only Organic vegetables and fish or chicken (also Organic), no red meat (the traditional vet will later disagree with this part), organic fruit.  The fruits and vegetables must be soaked in vinegar and water in a sink for 20 minutes.  In the other side of the sink, soak the fish or chicken, also in vinegar (organic preferred).  Then rinse in Spring water.

No bug sprays (I had just had an exterminator come the day before and Michael had the presence to advise that I didn’t let them spray in the house- for which I am thankful), or harsh chemicals on floors, no walking the dogs (Amara has somehow gotten involved in this now) in wind or letting them stick their head out the window of the car, no heating food in a microwave oven.

“We can treat him homeopathically for Lymphoma, or you can choose chemotherapy, or a combination.”

Just as they say that there are no atheists in a foxhole (I am not sure I believe this.  I have known some pretty sure athiests, but still……..) I am suddenly not so against Western medicine.  After all, people are cured of cancer with chemo and I have heard miracle stories of cures without any medicine whatsoever- positive thinking, seeing the cancer being blown up by imaginary tanks, etc. but Samadhi can’t positive think in that way and I don’t know if I can be a surrogate positive thinker, picturing my own steely, very large tanks blowing away his cancer, but leaving the rest of him wholly healthy and unscathed.   Before I can answer, it seems that Dr. S has guessed that I will do the combination thing, especially since on the phone I tell the receptionist that we have an appointment with the top oncologist in Vegas in a month.

Samadhi, Amara, Michael and I  leave the office a half hour later, with a special homeopathic treatment based on his exact blood, another bottle of immune booster and the holy water additive.  While Michael is skeptical about some of the things the Doctor said (and later I will be too, when Samadhi’s lymph nodes have shrunk- immediately after two doses of chemo) we both somehow feel comforted.  Maybe part of holistic medicine is the feeling of some power in a situation that could otherwise be akin to the category of event that would send one to a panic room.  Only there isn’t one strong enough or big enough to keep out what has already invaded.

On Healing Samadhi

A few weeks ago, I noticed a lump in my dog, Samadhi’s, neck.  After casually asking a few people about lumps in dogs necks and the possible origins, I called the vet.  Her receptionist, who cannot be a day over 20, answered  the phone.  The crux of her training must be in answering phones, booking appointments and running credit card charges.  She is certainly not trained in animal medicine, so I am not sure why I consulted her about the possible nature of my dog’s condition.  Nonetheless,   I tell her my concern and ask, “could it just be allergies?”   It must be human nature to name things in benign ways, to project the best possible scenario, as if saying it could make it so.

“It could be,” the receptionist answered, bubbly as most under 20 year old’s are.  “Just make sure it doesn’t get any bigger.”  I hang up and go on with my life.

A few days later, I am petting Samadhi and I feel the lump as I am brushing my hand over his neck.  It certainly feels bigger, as now I am feeling it without looking for it.  I call the vet immediately and make the first available appointment, which is the next day.

At the vet, Samadhi exhibits normal dog behavior:  he hides behind the chair in the lobby, either figuring that we cannot see him there, the way that children think you disappear if they can no longer see you, or at least that we cannot reach him and even if he ends up living there, he assumes that is preferable to whatever will happen if he ends up in one of the examination rooms.

The receptionist, let’s call her Sarah, because she will become important again later, takes us to a room where we will wait for the vet.  Inside the room is a steel table and a table full of ads for medications and other life-saving pet needs.  A plastic rattle snake poised to strike, teeth bared, sits on the table with an ad for snake protection for your dog.  A brochure asks, “What if you lost your dog?” and suggests an electronic chip should be embedded in their head for just such an occasion.

The vet assistant comes in.  I have never seen her before.  Almost every time I come to the vet, there is a new assistant.  I wonder about that.  She asks me to put Samadhi, who is now trying to hide behind a much smaller chair, on the steel table.  She takes his temperature, thankfully with a thermometer that is placed inside his ear, listens to his heart with a stethoscope and then feels his lymph glands.

“Hmmmmmm,” she says as she feels his throat and behind his back legs.  Why do Doctor’s always say hmmmmmmmm.  Is hmmmmm ever good news?  “All of his lymph nodes are swollen,” she says, “which is unusual.”

Michael asks if he could just have allergies.  “Well, his skin looks good and if he had allergies, it would probably show up on his skin.  I think Elena (the vet) is going to want to take an aspiration of his lymph nodes and send them to the lab for testing.”

We are now learning a new lexicon:  Aspiration.  Basically it means they will stick a needle in his lymph glands and take lymph cells the way they would draw blood.  They take him out of the room for that, weigh him and then bring him back in and give him all of his yearly shots, which he is also due for (this will also become important later).

The assistant tells us that the test will, unfortunately, take about five days, especially because we are in the office on a Thursday, and the weekend will delay things.  Then she leaves and says that the Doctor will be in shortly.

Elena comes in and asks when I noticed the swollen nodes and tells us that she got a very good sample of his lymph tissue, which is good and that the tests will take about ten days to get back.  “Ten days,”  I say, more alarm in my voice then I meant to convey, “your assistant said five.”

“She lied.”

Millions of people must know what it feels like to be, “waiting for the results from the test.”  You play the scenario over and over in your head, how the doctor will call and say it was all a big mistake, you are healthier than ever, healthier in fact, then anyone they have ever known.  Every once in a while, maybe only in dreams, the other possibility will sneak in, the scenario where they tell you to get your things in order, you have only a few months left.

When I was just a toddler, my father received such a phone call.  The doctor told my father that he had an inoperable brain tumor.  The next week, he found out that it had been a mistake, a shadow on the x-ray or something.  I can’t imagine what that week must have been like for my mom and dad, whether I picked up on anything and wonder how it affected the way my dad lived his life after that.

Dogs don’t have any affairs to get in order and they don’t know that they are waiting for test results.

I knew it wouldn’t take ten days.  I felt that Elena was hedging her bets.  On Tuesday morning, when I woke up, there was a voice mail from the Animal Hospital (Sarah, bubbly as ever) saying that Samadhi’s tests had come in and asking us to call and make an appointment to go over the results.

I was sure that they would say he was fine.  I think I was sure.  I know, that according to the Law of Attraction, you are supposed to visualize and feel the result you want, not the one of which you are afraid, so I either knew he would be fine, or at least wasn’t giving myself much permission to imagine otherwise.  I did, I remember, feel a peaceful calm that felt like the universe assuring me somehow.  But why did they ask us to come in?  “Maybe,” I argued to myself, “he has an infection and they want to give him antibiotics.”

I called the hospital and made an appointment, with Sarah, for that day.