Well, I didn't get up early enough and we got to the park again at 7:00 am. Again, perhaps because it was Sunday, there were already quite a few other people there: walkers, runners, people with dogs. At any rate, no heron this morning. I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the heron I saw was not "my" heron but another, stopping at our pond for a break on its way further north. Which might mean that "my" heron is yet to arrive (Crazy L might turn out to be right, after all - she might not return until after my last chemo!) Of course, the Mallard couples, some Canada geese, and many many birds were going about their morning routines. We walked both loops of the park. I actually saw two gray squirrels engaged in ... well, mating. Interestingly, they engaged in foreplay. Some mutual grooming with their little hand-like forepaws, and licking each other's heads and shoulders. I'm not kidding. And then, one on top of the other, from behind, grasping her with those little paws. Squirrels!
Here's what I thought about today. I've lived in this city for more than 10 years. I've been to this park many many MANY times over that period. Of course, never with the regularity and at the consistently early hour that has been the case over the past 9 or 10 months. But I have spent many hours walking the paths of this park. But until last year when I began coming early in the morning, and especially after my cancer diagnosis, when these morning walks became somehow precious to me, I really can say that I walked through the park but not IN the park so the park didn't get IN me. Now, every time I am in the park I am paying attention to being there. And what's amazing is that day after day, week after week, month after month of going to the same place, and pretty much doing the same thing, there is always more to see, more to experience, more to learn, more to feel. Now that I am paying attention, the so-called "familiar" is actually deep uncharted territory.
Before; I treated time in the park the way we tend to treat a familiar drive made by car, where we might choose to drive a country road because it is more pleasant than a highway, but still it is just something done to get from one place to another that allowed me to think about other things. I wasn't paying attention. I was there in the same park walking the same paths by the same pond where presumably the same creatures live ... but I was not really "there." It occurred to me this morning that this is a metaphor for how I also have so often lived my life. I have just passed through it, without paying attention. But all the wondrous things I have discovered in this city park and its small universe also suggest that my life and its familiar routines are likely also filled with wonders should I just begin to pay attention. Harder to do on the scale of an entire life than on a morning walk, but likely also worth it.
My last (my LAST!) chemo is Wednesday at 10:00 - well, my appointment with Dr. R's PA - Dr R is apparently unavailable, for which I am sorry; I like seeing her - is 10 a.m. That probably means the pre-chemo drugs will be given to me about 11:00 or a little later, which means chemo would start around noon. At any rate, the late start should mean (especially since I have to get up at 5:00 a.m. to take the Decadron) that Jessie and I can make it to the park on Wed. morning! V has offered to take me to chemo, and we'll have coffee first. (I still remember Nurse E telling me to "eat breakfast" on the day of chemo; they have such faith - with good reason - in the new anti-nausea medication that they want you to eat!)
For some reason I find myself very nervous about this last chemo. I've tried to think about it and the only things I come up with are that the last couple chemos were harder, so I dread this last one being harder still, and the other thing - which I've mentioned before - being my odd reluctance to end the protective custody of cancer treatment where I have definitely felt that - as uncomfortable as "treatment" can be, at least cancer isn't getting me. In any event, treatment and these fears of treatment will soon be behind me. I am glad, though, that Jessie and I can likely get to the park on the morning of the last chemo. Ironically that fact makes me actually look forward to Wednesday.
Peace.
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