On Appreciation

The most magnificent orchid suddenly arrived at my door--all purple, majestic glory. To my surprise, a long-time feminist colleague, Belita Cowan, the founder of the National Women's Health Network, sent it--a "gift" to help speed up my healing from a fall. This kindness was totally unexpected, and it reminded me that I should really work on cultivating my sense of gratitude for all the many gifts that come my way, that I either take for granted or do not privilege as much as I do the disappointments, betrayals, rejections, and outright attacks.

Here's another fine example. On the very Day of The Orchid, another feminist colleague, Jean Golden, sent me a book of her poems, "On Life," with a lovely admiring inscription about my own work. Oh, Golden's poems are "golden" with wonder, reverence for nature, painting, women, and life and, therefore, also for death. A few of her poems speak to me very directly, at just this moment, especially her poem titled A Little Advice for Aging Friends, which begins:

"Don't lean forward on a flight of stairs/This isn't a race to the bottom/Lean back a little/with your hand on the rail./Whatever it is will wait....

And her Voyage of Life (after paintings by Thomas Cole), which moves from Birth to Old Age and concludes this way:

“Time’s loud ticking dimmed./The walk fragile as walking on glass./The body remembers every crack and curb,/moving through familiar territory/with studied determination./Wary of danger lurking beneath/the deceptively solid ground./Like a survivor of an earthquake./Ever mindful of the tremors that whisper/“Don’t fall. Don’t fall.”

There's more. At the last moment, conflicted, I wrote something about Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was not a new point of view. In fact, I've been writing something like this for the last 25 years. The response was an unusual silence--I asked one of my groups whether they'd received what I wrote. Here's what Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a friend, colleague and the founder of the Deborah Project, wrote in response: "Oh yes, Phyllis, at least this (article) came through. But what can we say when you have written so poignantly and accurately what is there to say?"

When I went to take the necessary X-rays to survey the possible damage, I nearly bolted. This would be too much of an ordeal for me; I know this place; I've been here before; results have led to surgeries and poor rehabs. And then I caught hold of myself. Listen, You: Imagine if you needed medical tests and lived in a war zone or lived in any one of a hundred countries where such medical tests are either not available or only available to the very rich. Don't think about the agony of bureaucratic portals and medical indifference; rather, consider yourself very lucky.