The Panel

We all sat down at the front of the room. We were informally introduced in front of sixty to eighty people.

At first, I felt like we were the tribunal. All six of us, sitting there as the counsellor spoke over the crowd about long term survival.

Our ages range from, roughly, twenty years of age to yours truly.

I chuckled to myself as the mic started at the opposite end of the panel. I'd be last. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing. I don't like public speaking so I tried to crack myself up inside.

I wore a new shirt and "dress jeans". It's funny. When you sit in front of people on the subject of long term survival, you sort of want to look, what's the word? Healthy.

I get touchy about such things. The room was a mix of nurses earning their career continuing education points, and parents of children with cancer. Some of the "kids" attended with their rental units.

One girl in particular caught my eye. She was probably in her mid to late teens. Slight, with a RISD wardrobe and accompanying attitude. Her multi-colored hair was short and screamed punk rock. A big ass sticker was just below her shoulder that said "survivor".

She had the attitude. I am sure I romanticized it a bit but her look equaled what I felt inside. Rebellion. Fight. Attitude. I just wanted to scream at her - keep going, keep it up...don't give in.

The mic was getting closer. God, I had nothing to say and everyone was staring. The doctor before the panel had plastered various pictures of long term affects stemming from chemo and radiation. Yeah I was checking them all off in my head...one by one. It was a literal WTF moment.

I shook it off. I looked at my panel-mates and a wonder dawned on me.

We all look normal...

Okay, for those who know me and want to spew their almond milk at the equation Me=Normal, you know what I mean.

The mic got closer and closer. I looked over again and I confirmed what I've always said - we were still here. Normal, albeit affected, people talking about their lives in front of an audience. It was a surreal moment, both fact and fantasy swirling together.

We all sat in those large, badly colored lounge chairs with needles in our arms. We all smelled the rubbing alcohol till it made us nauseas. We all listened to the babble of doctors telling us they'll see us next time.

I took a peek at the audience and they were listening, hanging no less, on the words through the mic.

My innards shook. My legs were numb and I could have drunk a gallon of water because it was so dry in the room.

The mic was one person away. She is a stately woman, twenty-something, who is a criminal justice student. She didn't waver in her statements. She had an easy pentameter that spoke to me about that word again - healthy.

The mic was passed from that artist, to the counselor, to the nursing student, to the physician's assistant, to the law student...then to me.

We all were well. Sure, our bullets were used up early. Sure, some doctor somewhere will find a case to argue how healthy we really were...

We have scars. Mental ones as well.

I could argue that a generation was sitting before the audience.....ready to tell them that age old book title - We are still here.

I want the message to resound over the airwaves. We are still here.

Dammit.....hand me the mic.

Dear...Myself...

*Note to reader: This is an exercise in, well, I am not sure what. This is a letter to myself going back to when I was 20 years of age - a different person, mindset, body and spirit. I've always wondered what I would say to myself if I could go back...here is my crack at it.

Dear Me,

I'm forty-six years old and you are twenty. It's hard to believe twenty-six years have gone by. 

Looking at you now, it's hard to believe we are the same person. Inside me, today, you are buried deep and yet you still manage to pop out now and again. 

Sometimes I really resent you. You and your insecurity. You were scared of everyone and everything. You stayed up all night paralyzed by the fear of dying in your sleep. If you only knew what was coming. I won't go into that now because you really won't sleep. 

Maybe you should have taken care of yourself back then. You wallowed through school - a college you knew you didn't belong. Deep down you knew but you were afraid to be who you are today. You were afraid to fail. You were afraid to try too hard and simply fail. Change scared you almost into oblivion.

I have news for you. People fail every minute. And if you think 'girls' are your biggest problem, wait until you have a shooting pain up your arm and you are on a table staring up at hospital lights. 

So scared of failure. So little lack of faith in self. 

Shame on you for listening to the negatives. You will learn not to waste so much energy on those who look to knock you down. It will take you too many years though so get crackin' on that now will you?

If you only knew about what you will accomplish. If you had a glimpse, maybe it would all be different somehow. Maybe you would have been braver. Hard to tell. 

Here are a few things you have succeeded in...I thought  you should know. 

You will graduate college...you will get a job. No, I can't say you will ever love it but you will be more successful than you could imagine at it. 

You are going to be in a rock band - a pretty good one at that. 

You are going to learn how to skate and play ice hockey - something you dreamed of when you saw Jim Craig win the gold medal in the 1980 Olympics.

You will discover the gym and get stronger and thinner. I promise. By the way...you should have started running by now but that can't be helped right now.

You are a published author. No one will ever take that away from you. And while you are at it, be okay with who you are - an artist. Recognize it early and don't take 25 years to figure it all out. Keep dreaming all of those fantasies you use to distract you from life - it worked.

Let go of your regrets. Do it now. They will only haunt you on your darkest days.

Let go of your enemies both real and not. Do it now. The battles that rage in your head will get you no where.

Listen to your body. It's telling you how you are every minute of every day. Did I mention you should start running?

You will sound like your dad more and more....get used to it and be proud.

By the way, you will be a dad contrary to what everyone has told you all your life since you were six.

You will have friends for life. And they will want to be with you forever.

That's about it, Me. I wish we could sit and chat longer but you and I are very different people. You like to sit there and wait for the world to guide you down the river. Not me. Maybe not as much. It's an unforgiving world we live in - grab it by the horns and twist until it goes to its knees. 

I'll never forget you, Me. Deep down, you are always there. I might try to hush you more than I should but I learned a lot from you. I am me because of you. 

Everything you did, made me what I am today. Sometimes I curse it. Most of the time, I accept it. 

Enjoy the ride, Me, and smile every once in a while. You don't do that enough, if you ask me. 

Sincerely,

Me

Food For Thought...

I've had a long standing relationship with food.

I can sit and blame everything in my life on the treatments over a lifetime ago, even the eating habits.

Along with a laundry list of side effects that I have documented off and on, one of the stranger aspects came with eating.

All I remember was his formal name - Dr. Webber. He was a typical looking mad scientist type. He wore a typical white coat with typical glasses he would stare just over the rims from. He had typical male pattern baldness, with tufts of white around his ears and back of his head. All typical save for the fact that he wasn't mad or insane. What he was, was the head of Radiology.

I remember piercing blue eyes. He would always look me in the face when he talked to me. A refreshing deal when most adults talked around me, pointed, shook their heads and whispered when they realized I was crying at the words they were saying all too loud. Not with Dr. Webber.

Before all of my life began, I was built in my father's image. I had the build, the shoulders, the sturdiness at 6. After the storm took over, I put on a tremendous amount of weight and I never shot up in height like my brothers did.

More than likely it was the dosing of a steroid called prednisone that probably pushed the bulk against my favor. And along with a voracious appetite came an oddity - I couldn't taste any of the food I was eating. I remember explaining to Dr. Webber, that everything tasted "tinny" or it had no taste at all. Not salty or sweet. Not savory or tart. Nothing.

Outside of his white coat, Dr. Webber was a rolled up sleeve kind of person. He sat with me and my mother with a series of almost nonchalant questioning. Then he turned to me exclusively.

"If you had to pick out your favorite food, Joe, what would it be?"

Now picture a fat italian kid thinking about all of the possibilities. I grew up in a house where every Sunday, macaroni and meat sauce were the symphony that filled my nose for hours.

"McDonalds," I said.

"And what would you have at McDonalds?"

I'm talking steak and salad. Pasta fagiola. My mother's meatloaf...we won't go there.

"I like the fries..."

"And what else?"

"A hamburger..."

"And what else?"

Spaghetti. Porkchops. Fresh tomatoes from the garden. Sausage. Meatballs.

"And a shake..."

"Everything still tastes tinny to you?"

"Yes."

Dr. Webber turned to my mother. Years later I understood the mentality. If the patient felt good eating that stuff? The patient got a little leeway.

"Give him what he wants. Anything he wants to eat."

When you have a child who is in chemo and radiation...all that goes with it, you are hard pressed to push spinach smoothies into them.

I am not blaming anyone for it. That path may have been started with or without being sick. It was a different age back then. We didn't understand nutrition, exercise or the combination like the science it has become today.

Still on came the weight. In high school I was barely 5'-something and 225 lbs. No worries. Today that's 60 lbs away and a bad dream. The ramifications still resonate through me to this day.

They knew how they wanted to kill the disease but what they didn't know then was what about the patient? What about the psyche from having a body go hog wild, heavy on the hog?

What are the aftershocks as an outward 6 year old turns into an introverted teen? An introverted teen then turns into a rebellious young adult...

Decades later as I lay on a bed with a surgeon scrawling a pen sketch about where your heart blockages are...you wonder. And you keep wondering.

I love to eat. Eating to me is special. I pity diabetics who have to be careful about the carbs and those who cast aside eating food as a chore in general. To me eating, at the table, surrounded by friends and family harkens to my ancestors who huddled the same way in gratitude and very likely, survival.

My eating habits today are vastly different from twenty, even ten years ago. I get prodded, poked and even made fun of for what I take in daily. I don't care. I still enjoy it. I am motivated beyond what size jeans one would wear.

Still the resonating sounds off in my skull. Daily. Sometimes hourly.

Being overweight led to under confidence. Shyness took root. Introversion was planted. I lived in my own world. I was safe there. The irony is, that world back then, so dysfunctional as it was, has tributaries to my fantasy stories of today as an author.

With that dark period came loneliness and misunderstanding. You will note my love of wolves and other creatures that are 'misunderstood'. All of that came from the fat kid who didn't speak up much in high school.

No pity parades. Just the facts. Everything you have experienced has brought you to this place today.

Lots of people ask if I would change anything. If I could, would I?

Hard to say. Without all of these experiences I wouldn't be 'me'. Whatever that means. I do joke I may have been taller but that's another subject for another time.

Anyway, it's food for thought.....I am already thinking about my post workout breakfast....

When...

I shared my 'activity' schedule a short time ago. It's a basic routine, not unlike others across the globe.

The premise is simple:

Move.

Sunday - hockey, swim and/or run
Monday - Interval training/run
Tuesday - weights
Wednesday - rest
Thursday - Interval training/run
Friday - Weights
Saturday - rest

Keep moving.

Swap out what you'd like but this is pretty much the week. Today is a weight day, heavy, in fact. As the day wears on my body wears down, recovering. Before I go to sleep, my muscles are complaining.

The biggest, documented, question I get is "why?"

I say do until someone tells you, you can't do any longer...then do some more.

My scan results are 8 days away....I do because I feel I have to.


2012 was a year like most. It came and went. The country as well as many personal lives faced a common formula - loss, euphoria, struggle, fight, anger, happiness, joy....etc. The Mayan's ancestors had a nice chuckle. People are still killing others in the name of some god, yet the world for the  most part has peace.

It's a mixed bag. One hopes to have more positives at the end of time than negatives.

Or is it how we choose to handle the negativity?

Negative is coming. When you live life, you are surrounded by it. Just watch the news. Hence, I don't watch the news.

In the past few years, I've had a lot to be down about. It's not a pity parade, it's just my statement of how events have gone by in my life.

Yet, backing up one step, I can state that I am alive and breathing. Many can't. Many can't stand. I can and I'm thankful for that as well.

Many simply can't 'do'...I can.

I've learned a few tricks along the way. I am not one to make huge contributions to the Sunshine Club but I am learning to back up for a moment, count my blessings and carry on.

It all happens......when....

When I am around the holiday table, I take note of the relatives who have lived a long life and go on living, feeding those childhood memories I savor like candy.

When I am floundering at the gym, I remind myself that I am active. I am moving more than others...many others. Three years ago, I thought I'd never move again.

When stress hits me, I remind myself to keep breathing.

When I am alone, I remind myself that I have friends who care.

When I am on a cold road, struggling to run, I know that I am alive.

When I hear an inhospitable wind, I look up to admire the roof over my head.

When I long for my son to be three again, I smile that he is growing older and that I am there to see it.

We can't all be positive 24/7. That much is understood. I even think it is unhealthy. There is a dark reality that sits around ever corner.

What we choose to do with it defines how we will look at everything else in our lives.

I get my results in 8 days.

When I get those results, I know I'll walk out healthy.

Life...

*Note to reader: To the people of Newtown, Connecticut - nothing can be said to bring back your loved ones. No one can pretend to understand what you are going through. It is this writer's hope that the precious metal we call Life be eternally held as priceless by all of us going forward. 

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us." - A Christmas Carol

There was a story of a pride of lions. Scientists had followed this pride for over a year. Their social patterns were fascinating. The males sired, and the females hunted. They held court in their hard earned territory.

One day, the pride, mostly the females, turned on a young male. He was far off from being the alpha male but still, he was young and strong. The lionesses fought him tooth and nail until they drove him from the pride. 

Left on his own, he would either suffer his fate and die on the plains or he would have to fight his way into another pride.

The scientists were baffled. Why had the pride turned on this one lion? They were so threatening that the scientists were sure had he not left the group he would surely have been killed. 

Then a thought occurred. The young male had been acting strangely. Nothing too overt, but there were signs that something was amiss. He would eye the young cubs suspiciously and nose around the nursery too close for the comfort of the lionesses. 

The scientists concluded that the pride knew something was wrong with this young male lion. In the law of the land where every animal fights for survival, it is essential that only the strongest DNA be passed on from generation to generation. Any break in this chain, dooms that line of creature. 

The lions knew something was not right with the male. Even the scientists admitted later that he probably would have killed cubs if left to his own devices. 

This was a true story.

Animals know what's wrong. They feel it. Their instinct for survival supersedes our social order as humans.

A lion does not need to be told that life is prized above all else in the universe. Every ounce of their being is bent on life and its preservation.

Humans? We can be different. Unless we are pushed to the brink - fight or flight. Unless a human is facing his/her mortality, we barely acknowledge our right to live...worse yet, our love of life. 

We are afraid. Afraid to grasp life because it is a dragon and a thrashing one at that. Life will whip you around, throw you to the ground, and toss you to the heavens. Its teeth will snap on you. Life will make you bleed. 

But it will also let you breathe. It will let you swim and fly. Life will make you wonder. It will make you sing. It will make you love. 

Life can destroy, and in the same instance, mend. It can be maddening, perplexing, muddling, and a paradox from where there is no escape. And we shouldn't want to. 

Life is challenging and laughter. It is thoughtful and kind. Life can be cruel and wicked. 

It is the greatest treasure we can hold in our hearts. We often forget that. 

Tragedy is solemn and serious. 

We cannot wait for tragic moments to remind us that we, everyone on Earth and beyond, survivors of every day, are the universe's most invaluable living entities. 

Now we have to share that. Share it going forward. With everyone.

If we all fought for Life, we would never cast it aside again. 

....Appreciate...

*Note to reader: This posting is dedicated to a young man who passed from a brain tumor November 13, 2012. In deference to his family, I will not refer to his name. Just know that for all of the fighting and all of the bravado, there are losses and this fact, on every level, is tragic. I, for one, refuse to think this death or any other is in vain.

Ten years for an automobile is a long time. Ten years for child is nary a beginning.

I am approaching an age where loss, passing on and death tug at the corners of one's mind. A generation prior quickly becomes a generation lost.

In the battles with disease, when you are just trying to tread water, you can forget easily that your own mortality is in the balance just from time alone.

In recent days, news of the fallen has spilled in. One in particular is that of a ten year old boy who succumbed to a brain tumor. I confess to not personally knowing the boy but that doesn't cause one to pause for a very long moment.

During this time of year, our culture constricts the family bond to, sometimes, force us all in reminder that what is present now will not be guaranteed to have a future presence at all.

Immediately, there is a family who will not have their son, cousin, nephew, friend with them.

I know this is not uncommon. It's a sad truth. The world continues to rotate as we cling to the fabric of memory, every fiber stretching before us.

This isn't to focus on death. Tribulation berates us at every turn. So much so, that we often grow numb to the message.

This is a reminder that life is beyond price. Your life is priceless. We need you here. We want you here.

If we could pause for every loss, even for a moment, we would remind ourselves that there is a need, a demand, to be thankful for every breath we take.

We don't know where we will be tomorrow. I am not into the preordained. I am into appreciating every step we can take together.


This season, be thankful. Be grateful. Be humble. If we could all do these things at once, the universe would suddenly be in sync. Just an opinion.

Consciously remember to breathe. It is a treasure to do so. We want to celebrate life and the memory of how people lived, not how they left us.

Tell someone you appreciate them every day. It is our duty. It is our truth.


To the boy I never got to meet...be at peace.

Take it back...

It's breast cancer awareness month.

I think most of us, even casual observers have seen the wave of pink in everyday life. Whether it is pink hair extensions, pink football cleats, or pink Fiats driving around Downcity, you get the point. It is one month of pure focus on a type of disease that wreaks havoc on both female, and surprise, male populations.

I propose a new color for the ages. I submit that we don't just acknowledge ribbons, t-shirts, arm bands or pink elephants of all sizes. I offer up a new wave. A new outlook. A new mantra.

Trust me. I don't test the gods with a brave, foolish, cocky attitude. I understand my place amongst them. They often laugh at us with our trivial desires at a normal life, an old age, and a sip or twelve on the porch.

But as I sit bobbing in a sea of pink, it struck me - We are survivors. However, what does that term elicit when you say the word? Millions of people clinging to a life raft? Thousands thankful that they are "lucky"?

I think it is time to add a new color to our list. Here's the deal - you get to pick it out.

Me? I don't think there is anything wrong with a black tee, replete with skulls and a screaming word "WARRIOR" in blood red ink.

Why the hell not?

We are not just hanging on. We are not just sitting waiting for the next storm. We are taking back that which was taken from us - our health and well being.

You demand to take it back.

Jack LaLanne said it best. "You body is your slave. It works for you."

I don't have the scope of readers or listeners that good ole Jack had. But I say just the same. Something took your most prized possession - your health. Now get it back.

Put on your dark boots, adorn yourself in cammo, and streak the eye black on. Do it for real. Do it mentally. Do it anyway you want. Pierce whatever. Tattoo the mantra. Do what it takes because when you look in the mirror you will see one thing - your true self. Lying to yourself won't do you any good. Waiting for the next storm is for someone else. Sure, we all lose sleep over getting older but listen to yourself - you ARE getting older.

People live until they are one hundred, and why the hell not you. Yes we've been hit, and hit hard but if we focus, rally ourselves, hit the street, literally running and pour the perfect fuel into our bodies, you might, just might turn the tide. And your immediate result? A better quality of life.

Like all maxims, being absolute is, well, absolutely hard. It takes saying no to certain aspects in life more often than not. It takes discipline but ask yourself this - if you were being chased by a large bear would you just sit and wait for it to eat you? (Okay all the Nature Channel viewers, now is not the time to remind me about being "prey" when you run and curling up in a ball instead - you get my point).

Get up and fight for it. Take it back. We aren't just survivors. We aren't in a really bad lottery. It's not a god who has a sick sense of humor. It's not "why me".

I've done all of it. Sarcastic to sardonic. Tears until your gut twists into itself.

We can't be superheroes. We can't be superhuman. But we can be at our best.

We are breathing, right here, right now.

For a brief moment, you are a warrior. Forget the pink. Embrace the black....

And take it back.