My mother was just the opposite. She could not face her sorrow, never attempted to turn around and see what was chasing her. In and out of the discount stores, every single day, searching for peace in a blouse, for happiness in the right dress or shoe or tablecloth. Who could blame her? There was no guide into a promised land. The woman ached — a terrible disappointment engulfed her, and I beheld it. The harder it pushed, the faster she ran into the brand-new, hopeful discount megastore they built on Long Island. No driving distance was too great. Her foot on the gas pedal and the windows opened in the humid summers.
What was her sadness? I could give a litany. She was smart, but no one thought of sending her to college. She loved color, pattern, texture, but her only outlet was in the endless rows of store clothes. The man she really loved, Eddie Smith, the next-door neighbor, forsook her after he came home from the war. My father was found on the rebound, sitting in a hammock on his brother Sam’s rundown estate in Bay Shore. My mother’s parents were renting a summer cottage on the premises. What is love anyway? You recognize the loneliness in someone else or the hope of losing it with them.
I saw the outlandish connection of my mother and father, one of those couples that never belonged together. She wanted riches; he was happy with two pairs of shorts. She only cared about what others thought; he never gave thought to another’s needs. But now I saw something I never understood before. In the song of the world, they contained each other, kept each other in check. They weren’t happy, but in the hollow of my father, my mother’s unattainable peace was held in place, like a lock clicked shut. One twisted to the left; one to the right. In this way they balanced each other.
On a Tuesday at 3:00 a.m., deep under the covers but unable to sleep, listening to the tap of bare branches against the windowpane, the endless tick of the clock on the nightstand, trying to trace and make sense of my life, I saw that I carried their suffering in my own cells, compounded by my own. Where were my parents now? Gone. Where will I be? Gone.
How to make the best of my time left?
Who am I? Quickly, quickly, without thinking, what is your original face before your parents were born? Whole continents have never heard of a Zen koan, this puzzle revealing truth. Still, the dilemma continues. How to live when the ground has been taken away. No more mother or father, no more energy of youth, no more dream of infallibility. No more health.
The wind is blowing hard outside. The sun high and full. Three times I have applied lip balm in the last two hours. Dry with no promise of rain.
Earlier today I went to a class on William Faulkner’s Light in August. Whatever he wrote, whatever agony he lived, whatever prize he won, he too is gone. Sure we remember him, but where is William Faulkner?
ENDLESSLY LIKE A RIVER
When visiting Rome, any former English major in their right mind must go to the non-Catholic cemetery for foreigners, Via Caio Cestio. John Keats, the Romantic poet who died at age twenty-six, rumored to be a virgin, is buried here. So is Percy Shelley.
Forty-two years after graduating from college, as I walk down the rows of stones looking for Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” blooms in me all over again. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / are sweeter…Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought / as doth eternity.
As I place a stone and say thank you, my young, sincere love of literature returns. I meet not only Keats but young Natalie again.
I walk farther. I’d heard rumors that the poet Gregory Corso ended up here too. I met him when I studied with Allen Ginsberg in the seventies. I’d read in a newspaper that in his last months he was cared for by his daughter in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that straight-laced Midwestern city on the Mississippi. So unlike crazy Gregory.
Down the line of stones and Italian cypresses, I find the poet Shelley’s grave. And then, stuck at an odd angle right up front, I see a stone for Corso. His daughter managed to bring his ashes and bury them here.
At seventeen Gregory was the youngest prisoner ever to be in maximum security in Clinton, New York, on three counts: stealing a suit to go to a wedding, sleeping in his teacher’s room, and, the final straw, stealing a toaster. The previous inhabitant in the cell was the Mafioso Lucky Luciano, who also showed the Allies a way into Italy through Sicily. Luciano had left all of his books behind.
In that cell, Corso discovered Shelley. As he turned in the direction of poetry, his life was saved, and he always wished to be buried near his great master, that Romantic poet.
On Corso’s stone, I read:
Spirit
is Life
it flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea
What else to say? All in that Corso poem.
20.
MARCH 1, A SUNDAY, was Katagiri Roshi’s twenty-fifth memorial day. Yu-kwan and I went to a concert at three in the afternoon to hear Midori, the famous Japanese violinist. Our seats were up close. She was a small woman who had a big sound. I watched her bend and sway in a loose-fitting, short-sleeved black-and-white dress. The music seemed to come up through her hips and legs; it was as if the violin played her. A thin string from the bow suddenly snapped and dangled. She didn’t stop. She and the violin played on into the ocean of Schumann.
I thought of my teacher, twenty-five years dead. That’s a long time. How could I have been so lucky? His lectures every Saturday morning and Wednesday night — I never understood most of what he said, but my body drank it, took it all in. And when he died at sixty-two and we sat for three days with his corpse in the zendo, my body also took this in. I could not accept his death.
Four months ago, right before I went under the anesthesia for the stent surgery, I whispered thank you, and I saw my young body sitting still by the window in the zendo. All of his effort to bring Zen to the United States — out of the war, and Hiroshima, Nagasaki, General MacArthur — to that white room by a lake in Minnesota. What was I doing there?
Even in art history class in college, when the professor showed slides of exceptional architecture in Minnesota — the IDS building by Mies van der Rohe, the bank in Owatonna by Louis Sullivan — I took exceptional note. I had no idea at that time who I was or where I was going, but I knew that Minneapolis was in my destiny.
I’d never used the word destiny before. What is it? A coagulation of your hunger to find a path, to find a place, to set one foot after another. To come inside out; to show your guts, everything you are made of.
If this was true about destiny, cancer was my ally on that course. It pushed me out beyond any boundary I had known. It threw me right into the pool of fear, stripped me down to animal survival. Could I face that polarity of life and death and find another place to stand?
* * *
—
Tears rolled down Yu-kwan’s face. Schumann was one of her favorite composers.
Her hair was growing in slowly and looked like duckling fuzz, very, very short. She felt self-conscious, didn’t realize she was now fashionable, hip, wearing big earrings.
After the concert, as we walked across Santa Fe Plaza, a tall, handsome man in his twenties ran after her, then walked backward to face her after he caught up. “Excuse me,” he said, shy but determined. “I just want to tell you — I love your hair.”
Yu-kwan lit up. “Thank you.” I could tell she felt beautiful again.
What has cancer taught me? How old will I be when I die? I didn’t know. I settled on seventy-five. Then I decided on eighty-six.
Over the summer, when I was receiving infusions, I’d heard on the radio that Peter Matthiessen, Zen teacher and author of The Snow Leopard, plus many other books, died on a Saturday at eighty-six. On the following Monday his last novel came out. The novel was the conclusion of his struggle to comprehend, make peace with Auschwitz. Years earlier, I sat opposite him
along the railroad tracks at that concentration camp during a weeklong retreat. Now I thought, Yes, that’s how a writer should die, writing to the last. Eighty-six gave me a hopeful number.
No one knows when their death will come; I remember the words Katagiri said that one December in the zendo.
21.
YU-KWAN AND I were both now on the other side of cancer — at least for now. A possible return loomed over us. And we found ourselves alienated from each other.
Taking care of our individual cancers worked well, but now we didn’t know how to come together again. She had become a stranger.
We went through the motions of dinner together, a movie, maybe a walk. We didn’t say much — we never talked a lot together, but before, our silence was weighty, full of feeling, contentment, and trust. Now it felt like a wafer we kept cracking and crumbling with each step.
And I knew a good heart-to-heart would not work. It was never our way. I felt lonesome and sad, but I had no energy or inspiration to adjust our connection. I thought, We are falling apart, breaking up right before our eyes, and neither one of us can do anything about it. We went through the motions of a relationship, our roots underground grappling to reach each other.
One Saturday morning, in an effort to break through, she showed up with a gift, a small box she presented to me. I opened it. Fancy clip-on (I’ve never pierced my ears) turquoise earrings from an upscale tourist shop on the Plaza.
I’d lived in New Mexico for forty years. I already had all the turquoise I’d ever need. I didn’t want these.
I tried them on. They looked awful. I thought, She has no understanding of me.
I took them off, handed them back. Through gritted teeth I said, “Can you return them?”
Her eyes were cast down. “Yes, I asked before I bought them. We can have credit.”
“Well, thanks anyway.” I was as cold as an outdoor winter doorknob.
She looked at me. If eyes could cut, I would be sliced to pieces.
* * *
—
Two days later, when I woke up, I felt a splash of happiness. For no reason I thought, I’ll roast a chicken. What a good idea. Potatoes, carrots, a salad. I didn’t think: Oh, now things will be good. I just took one step after another — bought the poultry, rubbed paprika, garlic, salt, pepper into the skin the way my grandmother taught me. The roasting aroma filled the kitchen, and I hummed as I tore lettuce leaves.
I invited Yu-kwan. An hour later I heard the click of the front door. She entered the kitchen. “Smells great.” She went to the shelf, reached for two plates, pulled out forks and knives, set the table in an old rhythm we had established before the cancer.
The meal was ready. We sat down and dug in.
“This meat is so juicy,” Yu-kwan said as we ate. “I like the dressing this time.”
After dinner we relaxed. We had shifted to another dimension — one we couldn’t find before through struggle or discussion. Our bodies had to shift out of fear, out of the physical onslaught we’d been through. This couldn’t be pushed, manipulated.
Cancer taught me I wasn’t in control.
Really though, I’d learned that before — from falling in love. A turn of dark hair, noticing someone’s shyness, can flip you into that realm.
To truly find our way back to each other, we had to let go, follow a circuitous route. Our will had little to do with it.
22.
IN LATE SPRING, Yu-kwan and I took the hiking trip in Ireland that we had canceled the year before. Both of us were up and able but also a bit baffled, like two people let out of a dark prison into the light. Would we hold up? It wasn’t a group tour. We would be going it alone, with maps and accommodations set up ahead of time by a company in Vancouver. Just the two of us. No connections, no one we knew in Ireland. And after Ireland we planned to fly to Yorkshire and hike the Dales. In all, we would be gone almost a month.
As we headed out on rocky paths, up and down hills, as trial runs, my hip hurt, then my left shoulder. Each time I was sure the cancer had returned. Pain amplified the fear.
On the third morning, I panicked. “We made a terrible mistake. We need to fly home immediately.” But we didn’t. Instead, we waited for the taxi that the Vancouver company had arranged to pick us up and take us to the trailhead, for a seven-mile hike ending by the sea. It had rained hard the night before, and it was still drizzling.
The beginning of the hike was a cold, dismal spot. Through the fog we saw a marker up ahead. I was wearing a pink slicker; Yu-kwan, behind me, was wearing a gray poncho. Underneath we were bundled up with woolen clothes.
We came to a bramble crowding against a huge puddle. I managed to edge along it and get to the other side. As I did, I heard a big splash. I turned to see Yu-kwan flat supine in the middle of the puddle.
I gasped. “Are you okay? What happened? Do you want to go back?”
She lifted herself up. “No. Let’s keep going.” She shook herself off.
I smiled as I forged ahead. I love that girl, I thought, and from then on the balance was tipped. No matter what fear or hesitation arose, I kept saying, Let it go, Nat. And I did.
The next day we took an old fishing boat to the Aran Islands and walked five miles against a strong wind to our guesthouse. For breakfast each morning I ate Irish porridge, and it sustained me, seemed to settle my overexcited stomach. We took pictures. We chatted with locals. I read a novel called Grief by Andrew Holleran that I had brought from the States. It dipped me back into sadness, reminded me that no matter how cheerful Yu-kwan and I became, the blast of the last fourteen months was continually at our backs.
On the last morning, we were dropped off in the Connemara, an area of big mountains with little vegetation. Even the cab driver gasped when he saw where he had taken us. We had to climb a steep mountain to get to a path on the other side. No houses, nothing anywhere. Only some scraggly sheep and goats.
I got out of the back seat slowly. “Are you sure this is right?”
He nodded. “This is what the directions say.”
We took a few breaths. The cab turned around and drove off along the stony road.
Yu-kwan and I looked at each other, then up at the incline. I raised my shoulders in resignation. “Might as well.” I’ve never climbed anything as steep. Near the top was supposed to be a small chapel to Saint Francis. The rumor was that he passed through here once.
We finally reached what looked like the top, only to discover it was merely a hump. The incline continued. My calves ached. There was no going back, nothing to go back to — only a rocky, empty landscape spread behind us. In front of us were piles of sharp slate. We had to balance and step from one pile to another.
Sweat running down our faces, we finally reached the top. The promised chapel was there, and we collapsed near the small altar outside.
I opened my pack and we munched a few nuts and raisins, too tired to eat the bread we had brought from breakfast.
“I’m praying.” Yu-kwan dragged herself over to the altar. Who cares what religion? We were ready to prostrate ourselves in humility. We had made it this far.
When she was done, I stumbled over and knelt down. Please let my life continue. Let me live. Saint Francis, you of the birds and nature and poverty, please give me life.
It was a sharp steep downhill climb, more difficult than up. My legs shook.
A baby lamb ran across the path. I watched it as I walked — and fell hard on my knees and hands. The slate cut through my pants.
“Are you okay?” Yu-kwan shrieked.
“I think so.” There was a gash on my knee and my left palm was scraped hard. No bandages, no phone, no people, no help.
We staggered down the rest of the hill to a high iron fence with no way around. We’d have to climb it. I threw my pack over.
On the first try I couldn’t lift my bruised knee high enough. The thought ran through me
: This is what you get for praying to a Christian saint. I tried again — standing near the top rung, I lifted my other knee first. It worked. I hoisted myself over to the other side.
A long uninhabited dirt road was ahead. The map said ten more miles.
After three miles we heard a car in the distance. I thought, No, my knee can make it. But as the small white car neared, I shot out my hand and waved. The car stopped beside us.
“Climb in. Where you going?
“Amazing I’m here. I would never come this way, but me sister needs me to pick up her children from school. She just called.” The driver repeated this twice as we bumped along.
We told him where we came from, that we just climbed over that mountain where the chapel was.
“Is it still in good shape? Twenty-five years ago, me and another man built it. Took us a long time. We had to carry up all the equipment.”
I’m sitting in the back, my leg propped up along the length of the seat; I lean forward. “You built it? You were the person?”
“Me and another fellow.” He shook his head. “Of course, we were younger then.”
I lay back against the window. The old saint did hear my prayers. Thank you, I whispered.
23.
AFTER IRELAND we flew to Yorkshire, England, where Yu-kwan once lived. We stayed in a guesthouse for a week near the famous Yorkshire Dales — hundreds of miles of trails, starting from the Lake District up north and through national parks. We went out each day to hike to small country towns along the River Wharfe.