Hi Friends. It’s been a few months since I’ve sent along an update and there are multiple reasons for this. One, I’m tired. Tired in a way that’s becoming increasingly difficult to explain, because it transcends bodily fatigue. I’m weary in my bones, in my soul. Two, while I really, really, really (if I say…
Hero? Yes, Hero.
In the Spring of 2020, David took the ferry home from Amazon, not knowing it would be for the last time. Because COVID forced him to work from home, I heard him cough. Then I heard him cough again. And again. Except it wasn’t really a cough; it was more like a choke. Taking too…
Happy Anniversary to Us
“If we can stay with the tension of the opposites long enough–sustain it, be true to it–we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.” Marie-Louise von Franz This is a post about the tension of the opposites. Today is our anniversary. Seven years ago,…
What is Normal, Anyway?: Of Carpenter’s Squares and Cyanobacteria and the Way
Things change so fast. We try to return to what we once knew, in our bodies, only to find that the body refuses these reversions, these revisions, choosing instead to carry on with its daily confrontation with normality. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about, been trying to process: The changes we face, sometimes moment to…
Help, helper, helping. Help!
Repeat the word enough and it becomes meaningless; a hiccup of a word, either from indigestion or the sound someone makes when they take a breath while crying. This post is about that word, and how many ways in which its meaning becomes laden with so many things that are, well . . . unhelpful….
Upendings and Updates
It’s been a few months since I’ve written a post. I should instead say that it’s been a few months since I’ve published a post. I’ve written several of them, but when it came time to publish them to our webpage, I hesitated and stalled. This, then, is going to be long, for there are…
Peggy, the PEG Tube, part i
It’s frustrating, this not being able to find the precise word. Often I feel driven to reduce what we experience, feel, endure, achieve to a single word, as if its discovery will present a magical incantation, a kind of Abracadabra! for solving for helplessness. It’s been a difficult month and a half since I last…
Trials, Tribulations, and . . . Howie
How is David doing? It’s now been a year since this disease first showed itself. Back then we thought it was merely allergies, or worse, a mini stroke. Either would have been better. Because I’m not here to sugar coat reality, here’s how he’s been doing, brutally and succinctly. He has ever-greater difficulty walking and…
Why Mason Bees?
Warm welcomes. Well, to begin–after learning what our page is about–I figured the first thing you might be wondering is, “What do Mason Bees have to do with ALS?” Honestly, beyond being an apt metaphor, not a whole lot. But here’s why we gave this place such a silly name. Recently, David and I took…
I Require a Tug
A few years ago Gabrielle bought a reusable burlap bag from Trader Joe’s with the above “Zulu” signal flag printed on the side along with the caption “I Require a Tug.” I thought it was hilarious in a way that people who don’t know me well wouldn’t understand. Anyways, over the ensuing years I co-opted…