Weeks ago, I dreamed of a towering reef of black rock in the ocean, with waterfalls running down the sheer cliff facing the land.

When I woke up, I thought, "Waterfalls in the sea... what an odd notion."

Yesterday, we went for a walk on West Cliff in Santa Cruz. It was raining lightly, and the surf and tide were both high. Waves were breaking against and over tall black rocks with sheer cliffs facing the land.

Waterfalls flowed over the faces of the rocks and back into the ocean.

storm watch

waterfalls return the waves

to the sea

Final Journeys

In late October, while my father was dying, the maple leaves were falling.

A small yellow leaf fell on my windshield one night and got lodged in the wiper. It fluttered cheerily on the way to dance that morning and was still in my wiper when I got home.

I thought that was kind of amazing, and resolved to let it stay there until it was ready to leave.

The little leaf rode with me to San Francisco the next time I went to visit my father. As I drove away from the nursing home where he was, I was thinking of what to say to my mother, who was in New York, about how my dad was doing. His health was deteriorating rapidly, and I was wondering what I could say to her to prepare her for the difference in his condition over a period of a few weeks.

The leaf caught my eye as I drove, and I thought “Some things never are made right. He's not going to get better. He's just withering up and getting ready to drop off, like my faithful leaf there.”

We always think things are going to get better. It's difficult to face down the situations where they're not, where all you have to look forward to is a release from the pain and prison of the body.

The leaf fluttered determinedly in the wind, reminding me of my father's tenacity of spirit. All through his struggle with brain cancer, he never wasted time or energy on resisting was was. He accepted the situation and put all of his energy into making the most of it, like the methodical engineer he was.

The leaf stayed with me for about 6 weeks, getting thinner and browner and smaller as the days went on. My dad died, but the leaf hung in there, reminding me of him every time I drove my car.

This morning, I drove to dance in the rain, my leaf bearing me company. I stopped with the windshield wiper in the up position and decided to photograph the leaf from that angle.

I snapped the shot after dance, put the camera away, fastened my seat belt, and started the car.

The windshield wiper started where it had left off, and...

...my leaf

...fluttered away.

“My leaf!” I cried, feeling bereft and abandoned and betrayed.

How could it leave me? After all we'd been through together?

Then I noticed that it had plastered itself to the far corner of the windshield.

I turned off the car, unbuckled my seatbelt, got the camera out again, and got out of the car.

I photographed the leaf in its new position:

I very carefully peeled the leaf away from the windshield. I gently opened it up flat, uncurling the edges that had folded over one another. I held it there in my hand for a moment, in the rain, then I got back in the car.

I spread it out over my pack and took another picture:

It's so delicate and translucent, so fragile.

I brought it home like a rare treasure, somehow completely different from any of the other many maple leaves from the same tree that litter our driveway. I folded it up carefully in a dish towel and set it to press under the bird encyclopedia.

My leaf.

I'm going to immortalize it, either between sheets of waxed paper or laminating plastic, and place it on the life altar at my dad's memorial gathering.

To others, it will just be a nondescript brown leaf, completely unremarkable.

To me, though, it speaks volumes about my father's final days, about his spirit, and the way he faced his death. It even speaks of the way he hung on for us, caught in our windshield wipers, ready to die but willing to be there a little longer for the ones he loved most. Knowing, maybe, that we'd need the windshield wipers to clear the rain from our eyes this El Nino winter.

Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville.

Traditions with Meaning

About 10 years ago, I was feeling very Grinch-like about Thanksgiving. I was very aware that year of the issues of hunger and overeating. I didn't relish the idea of spending a holiday knocking myself out in the kitchen and then eating myself into oblivion. What's more, my family didn't enjoy roast turkey or most of the other traditional Thanksgiving foods.

I told Garry I wanted to do something different: fast from dawn until dusk and then sit down to a simple meal that we'd be truly grateful for. My memory is a bit hazy on the details, but I think that Garry and I fasted together the first year. One by one, the children have joined the Thanksgiving fast (usually without telling me they were doing so until they were already well into it).

We gather about an hour before dusk to sit together and give thanks for all the wonderful things in our life. At first, we gathered for silent worship for that hour before dusk, but Malcolm wanted to change it to sharing gratitude. It was so sweet the first year that we've continued to do it that way.

So we find ourselves with a Thanksgiving tradition that is meaningful to us and in alignment with our values. I don't think that I could have designed one that fits us so well or feels so right.

Each member of the family chooses the amount of fasting that feels right. People have done 24-hour fasts or dawn-to-dusk fasts or midnight-to-dusk fasts. I danced this morning, so I'm only fasting from noon until dusk. It's all okay.

I'm grateful for this family tradition. I love the way my husband and children have made it their own. I love that we have our own cherished tradition to celebrate this holiday. I love the transformation of Thanksgiving from a collection of Shoulds into a time for contemplation, prayer, and thanksgiving.

That first step was a doozy. I wanted to fast? On Thanksgiving? Do I always have to be such a contrarian?

It felt right, though, and Garry was with me, so we stepped off the curb.

That is, I think, the price of being truly alive. We can Should ourselves in the Ought house or we can live, authentically, from our center.

Unseen University

I grew up in Berkeley, where the university was omnipresent. It wove in and out of the city, an integral part of the landscape, the social environment, and our lives. I rode around its edges on my daily bus trips to town, and walked through campus on my way to other places. It was part of our daily lives, our conversations, our awareness. It was always there, like the campanile, a constant presence.

When I entered the university as a student, it felt like going to the school across the street. My life didn't change in any appreciable way; my landscape didn't alter; I didn't enter a world that had been barred from me. I simply went to class in the bigger buildings on campus.

When I transferred to UCSC, however, the town/gown split was noticeable. I lived in Ben Lomond and then Santa Cruz. Any trip to UCSC was deliberate, a steep climb to our local City on a Hill. The town did not take the proprietary interest in campus that Berkeley did; the university was not casually called by the same name as the town; UCSC was called out separately, not “Santa Cruz” or “campus,” but always “UCSC,” that place up there, that-a-way, the redwood tower up the hill surrounded by the old Cowell cow pasture.

Going back to Berkeley, I go back to both town and gown, to the city of Berkeley and the university that calls itself both “Berkeley” and “California,” a place steeped in history and geography, a place where the boundaries all blur together, a place at once personal and commercial and intellectual.

My brother took a quiz on Berkeley slang and came out with the result “You live in Berkeley, don't you?” I took the same quiz and got the same results, even though it has been 30 years since I lived in Berkeley. It has, however, remained my hometown, and a strong sense of my identity. I am a Berkeley girl, and the local dialect has apparently not changed that much in those 30 years. I have asked other people, people who are Californians but not from Berkeley or Oakland, whether they know, for example, the meaning of the slang term “shorty,” but no one does.

The Santa Cruz mountains have been my home for most of the 30 years since I left Berkeley, and I have a strong connection with the San Lorenzo Valley, and with Santa Cruz, and also with its university. My degree is from UCSC, and my marriage was made there, and it also calls to my heart.

I don't get up to UCSC that often, though. Not every year, and then only for cultural events. The university seems closed to me in a way that Berkeley (my twin Berkeley!) never has. It has never been mine, nor I its, in the same way that Berkeley has been. My children have been to Berkeley's campus more often than they have been to UCSC even though they spend far more time in Santa Cruz than they do in Berkeley; every time we go to Berkeley, our path runs through the campus. In our daily lives, our paths almost never run to UCSC; it takes an effort and a purpose to get us to our local campus.

UCSC is hidden, tucked away, keeping its secrets shrouded in its redwood heart.

Malcolm and I went up there yesterday for the opening of an art exhibit. I had thrills of memory, winding up the long road to the art gallery. We viewed the exhibit, and chatted with various people we knew, and walked back slowly to our car.

I knew the university was all there, places that I knew, places I might visit with Malcolm, along the various paths that wind through the campus. All I could see were the redwoods and a few buildings, and the occasional banana slug.

I Am Not a Thermodynamic Black Box, part 76

Over the past 3 years, I lost 75 pounds by using the time-tested strategy of Counting Calories.

It's worked. Mostly. There are a number of other factors that seem to play into weight regulation, though, and it's been interesting learning about them. I seem to be sensitive to carbohydrates, for example, and I can only lose weight and feel good when my calorie intake is in a very narrow range.

Over the summer, my weight loss reversed. To be more accurate, my weight jumped up 3 pounds four times after a weekend where I ate a bit more than normal (but far less than the surplus 10,500 calories that would supposedly be necessary to accomplish this weight gain). To compensate for this gain, I cut my daily calorie intake down to 1400. I was able to re-lose some ground that way, but not much.

By the end of the summer, I was gaining weight if I consumed 1800 calories in a day. Theoretically, a person of my weight and activity level needs 2100-2200 calories a day to maintain her weight. I should not be gaining weight on 1800 calories a day, and I should not be holding steady at 1400.

But I was.

I mentioned this to a friend who is a nutritionist, and she told me I was in starvation mode, that I should up my calories to 2000 a day for a week to break this cycle. I immediately raised my calories to about 1600 for a couple of days, then decided to listen to my body and let it decide how much to eat for the next few weeks.

I dropped a pound over the next week.

Those sudden 3-pound gains still puzzled me. In each case, they happened after I ate one or more restaurant meals over a period of 1-3 days. They happened even though I was conscious of my calorie consumption in each case. In the last case, I had a 3-pound gain from a single slice of chocolate cake consumed at a local restaurant, even though I compensated for the calories in the cake by cutting other meal portions.

In general, I eat a very regular diet. A piece of toast with tahini and apple butter for breakfast, then dance, then a helping of fresh fruit followed by a meal of chicken, turkey, or fish, vegetables, and a small helping of grains. My next meal is another helping of lean protein and vegetables with either a little fruit or a little grain. Afternoon snack might be fruit and nuts or another light mini-meal with protein and a vegetable. Supper is again a lean protein, vegetables, and perhaps another small helping of grains. I eat very little processed food, and very little sugar. I don't add much fat (mostly olive oil and coconut milk), but I don't worry about avoiding nuts or the skin on chicken or other natural sources of fat in my diet.

Last night, I watched this Sugar: The Bitter Truth video put out by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology.

Okay, I get it. I'm still not a thermodynamic black box, but a finely balanced biochemical instrument where what and how I eat matters as much as how much. And maybe it's not how much simple carbohydrate I eat that matters so much as which carbohydrates.

Maybe, maybe more than maybe, I have a body with a very low tolerance for fructose. Maybe when I eat sugar, my body converts all of it to fat, no matter how high a calorie deficit I'm running.

So, another couple weeks of calorie freewheeling (but no processed sugar) to convince my metabolism that there's food available, and then a return to the sensible 1600 calorie per day allowance that has worked so well for me in the past. And a look at my family's diet to see if we can reduce their consumption of processed sugar as well as mine.

And, today, I'm making chicken soup stock for two soups and pot pie, an apple pie with pippin apples, and london broil and potatoes and broccoli and delicious dry farm tomatoes with pesto for supper tonight.

The Fingernail File -- Day 1

Welcome to the first edition of the Fingernail File.

Many years ago, I was chatting with the wife of a cow-orker. She noticed that my fingernails were uneven lengths and commented on it. (Nice, eh?)

I told her that I like long natural fingernails, and that I was trying to grow them.

She told me that she did, too, but, as soon as she broke a nail, she tore all of the other nails off so they'd all match.

Shortly thereafter, I started doing the same thing. When a nail broke, I'd trim all the others on that hand to the same length.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that my fingernails are getting close to their maximum length on both hands.

I wondered how long it takes to grow them this long.

I decided to photograph them near nail-maximum, and note when I break a nail and have to cut the rest.

So, today, near nail-maximum:

Ready for hand modeling!

The nail on the left index finger is one of the longer ones, but it has curved like a claw, so it looks shorter than it is. It's actually longer than the one on the right index finger.

The pinkies and ring fingers always get longer than the others, though.

Weekly-ish shots until the first breakage....

coining words

I hereby claim the word schnoof as mine. I'm not sure I actually coined it myself, but I've been using it for years.

I originally used it to mean a surprise fit of laughter that made tea come out my nose. Later, when I started using nasal sprays to combat sinus headaches, I used the word schnoof for the act of squirting liquid up the nose.

So, schnoof: liquid going through the nose, either accidentally or intentionally.