In the Tall Grass

At present, the thing that causes me to feel unwell is when I get a phone call from the doctor. Ironic, but true. This happened yesterday. It is why I didn’t write.

I had been supposed to go for a consultation at King’s College hospital to discuss the possibility of my having a stem cell transplant, but I rang to cancel the appointment, due to having flu, so I wasn’t expecting a call.

I was beginning to feel well again at last, following our Christmas flu. There is a euphoria that comes when wellness is restored, after any period of illness. I felt it yesterday afternoon - a wild joy in being able to do simple things: climb out of bed, get fully dressed, walk downstairs, open the front door, feel the cold air on my arms as I press cardboard boxes into the recycling. I have been in this kind of euphoria all year, in fact, after most of last year involved being so seriously ill. I have been delighting in moving again, in growing strong again, amazed that I can get on a bike, go to the gym, climb a rope, learn how to pole dance. It has been a wonderful thing - wonder, being at the heart of it. “Look what I can do?!” I want to say. It feels child-like - a wish, not so much to demonstrate my skill, as to share in my sheer astonishment at the unlike-hood of it, after this same body could barely sit up in bed, needed a nurse’s support to walk a few steps to the bathroom. Now, look, I want to call out, in the gym - I can do six pull ups! Or - yesterday- look, I can put out the recycling!

But then, the phone rang.

It was from King’s. Because the consultant was keen to talk to me. And I wasn’t prepared, not prepared enough to tell her that I did not want this conversation now.

“I’ll be brief,” she said.

But I don’t even want the brief version now, I did not say.

So she told me, in brief, why she is so keen for me to have a stem cell transplant as soon as possible. And I am sure she meant well. I am sure she believes she knows what is best for me, given the science, given the statistics. But she did not ask me anything, only informed me of the facts, so she does not know my facts, my statistics, such as the number of times a day my son declares that he loves cats (many) or how often in the night my daughter still calls out for me, or how long I have to hold her till she sleeps, or how many pulls up I can do. Which is why I need - and I did try to say this - time. I am not sure it was heard.

Time. It takes me quite some time to recover from a call like that, to find myself again. Later I will go to the gym once more, and this will help. When I was a circus aerialist I used to spurn gyms - I had a kind of snobbery about them, about the body fascism I feared they propagated, about the absurdity of running nowhere on a treadmill, of lifting weights, rather than real things within the world. Now, I rather love these things - the purity of their intent. I love that so many different kinds of people, kinds of bodies, go there. I think of it like going to church. I am often moved to tears as I watch others kneeling, standing, bending, each engaged in some quiet conversation with themselves, their limits, hopes, fears, with who they are and what they want. So I will go and do my pull ups - my own body weight is still what I like to feel most - and this will help me to recover.

And I will reread Nancy Kline’s The Promise that Changes Everything: I Won’t Interrupt You. Because that is what the phone call from the doctor did - it interrupted me, when I was in the middle of tidying the house, in the middle of being with my daughter, in the middle of my thinking, in the middle of this writing, in the middle of finding my way.

When my daughter is upset - and she is a battler too, though her mode of wrestling is less physical than her brother’s, more emotional - as soon as I open my mouth to speak, she will scream: “Stop! You ALWAYS interrupt me!” This can be hard to hear, when I think I have been patient, when I have been listening to her for quite some time, to her protestations, fierce accusations, judgements, and yet a bit of me knows that she is right. We do it all the time - cut across each other, come in quickly, hurry to add our view, feelings, words to an exchange, instead of waiting all the way to the very end of someone else’s thought, and then maybe waiting a bit longer. Everyone deserves to be heard, uninterrupted. I believe it is fundamental to our wellbeing - to our being well. These days it does not happen very often, and certainly not, in my experience, in phone calls with consultants.

I think it is why I like to write. Because often in speech - even if others listen - I get diverted, confused. But in writing the page is very patient. It simply waits there - open, quiet - for the end of the thought to come, however long that takes. It is why I like my rope as well - the beautiful line of it, the way you can follow it all the way to the top and back again. And there is a paradox in this, because these patient lines - on a page, up a rope, enable non-linear thinking to emerge. Because, as Nancy Kline explains:

“Without the promise of no interruption we are too much on alert to the imminent disruption of our thought, and our thought stays safe in its linear trek. We need the promise and the attention to venture off into the tall grass where the missing secrets are.”

Yes. This is what I am trying to create in this Substack, I realise - to grow a kind of meadow here with plenty of tall grass, in which an incredible and complex diversity of flora and fauna may hide out. A kind of word re-wilding process, a restoring, re-storying, as of the body, after illness. Slowly, I hope, it will be my life, in full remission - that missing secret - that I find here.

Thank you for helping me.

Up my rope recently - photo by Mika Rosenfeld.