Bear Cub ― a.k.a. The Running of the Blues

I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. 

― Jane Kenyon, "Otherwise"

For the past few days, our little wildling has been with us here in Scituate at Charlie's childhood home on Grasshopper Lane where Jim and Cathy live still, and where the three brothers and their wives along with the grandchildren, cousins, in-laws, and extended family gather as often as possible.  The house is a "true north" of a dwelling for the Everett clan: a home well-loved by us all, with light, air, art, a warm kitchen stocked full of delicious leftovers, and Cathy's stylish flair as well as a creaky third-floor attic with overflow beds, a bunk room for the gaggle of grandchildren on hand every summer, worn and wonderful old toys and blocks and books all read by Charlie and his brothers when they were James's age and now paged through by that next generation of childhood.  There is a big summer porch with the perfect spot to spend a lazy afternoon reading or dozing, a garage full of bikes, beach toys old and new, sandy buckets to be harvested, the beach itself a short walk away.  It is a haven for us all, and a familial place of safety and comfort for James as he weathers this latest round of chemo and steroids before we head home to California.

I have not, as I had imagined, had the time nor the wherewithal to send regular updates since we were sprung from the hospital back to this haven. The departure from Boston Children's earlier this week was not a difficult transition, exactly, and in many senses the homecoming here was wonderful and James ebullient.  But unlike the spoonful of ice-cream we use twice a day to hide the steroid pills and other meds so he will actually swallow them, I am not going to sugarcoat the aftermath. After 23 days of steroids he has turned into a ferocious little bear cub with a temper and an appetite to match.  There had been flashes of this before we departed the pediatric cancer ward at 6NE; the worst night in the hospital is one that I still flash back to even now.  An initial 2am wake up where he was inconsolable, hungry, absolutely starving, soaking wet, begging for me to be with him. Desperate for food and water. Despite the mechanical and medicalized environment that envelops us now, there is something primitive in this condition, primordial even. He was craving smoked salmon of all things, couldn't get enough of it, and at 3am that same awful night I was feeding it to him, dropping pungent fold after fold of it into his mouth off the tine of a fork in the dark, weeping quietly at his desperation and trying to provide comfort, care, nurturing. Trying to ration it, trying to appease his insatiable appetite, knowing as soon as it was gone that he would be furious. Praying that his desperation and craving wouldn't turn into the wild rage that often consumes him right now and causes him to claw at me, roar at me, even bite me, to rage at the world.  There is a hunger in his eyes there that goes far beyond food - back to nature, to visceral needs, to wild survival.

It was a few days afterwards that Grace and Charlie arrived, and after a hospital reunion for them to see James again, Charlie and I switched places and I took the afternoon to be with Grace at the beach in Scituate.  The tide was out, the ocean mainly calm, with ripples of movement every so often.  We walked along the sand to find gory carcasses of fat fish washed up on the shore, some of them with eyes and silver bellies gleaming, tales still flopping. Others with big red slashes along their turgid bodies, no longer of this world.  We threw some of the wriggling ones back into the ocean as far as we could, even those with small gashes that looked like they still had a fighting chance, wondering what force of nature had caused this phenomenon.  Enacting our own version of the old starfish parable: "old man, how can you possibly save each one of these thousands of starfish washed up on the shore? don't you know your actions won't make any difference?"  And the old man throwing yet another one back into the waves, replying calmly, "Well, it sure made a difference to that one."

A woman walking along the beach noticed our confusion and said "Oh, it's the bluefish. They're here. It's a feeding frenzy. The Blues are running, as they say - you can see the ripples in the water if you look carefully."  And sure enough, we could, imagining the ghastly scene underneath: wild bites of fish flesh and teethmarks and bloody gills, a force of nature too primitive to be tamed, a Darwinian survival of the fittest underneath the waves.  I couldn't help but think of James and the fight he is in now, the assaults to his own body, the war of nature and cells and molecules that has emerged inside of him as his body fights the cancer and the drugs attempting to thwart it - and sometimes his ferocious primal outrage at even those poised to help him and love him most.  The feeding frenzy he succumbs to day and night, a result of the steroids but a primal force all the same, unparalleled and uncontrollable.  I have been having a hard time with this.  He is not my recognizable little boy right now except in glimpses, the calm of the storm.  We are still strong in the face of this beast, but I have been "running the blues" myself at the thought of what is ahead, what I can no longer control, what my life holds once we get home and how much I miss the bear cub that wasn't quite so fierce.

My bear cub, and his wild, primal, animal self.  We are bringing you home tomorrow, James.  I am so terrified, and so relieved.  We will return - and so, soon enough, will you - in body and animal soul.  More soon ... but tomorrow, we will be in flight!

For the poets among you who want more, the following is by Stanley Kunitz and admittedly (and luckily) more morbid than where we find ourselves.  It is beautiful and quite resonant nonetheless:

If the water were clear enough,

if the water were still,

but the water is not clear,

the water is not still,

you would see yourself,

slipped out of your skin,

nosing upstream,

slapping, thrashing,

tumbling

over the rocks

till you paint them

with your belly's blood:

Finned Ego,

yard of muscle that coils,

uncoils.

If the knowledge were given you, but it is not given, for the membrane is clouded with self-deceptions and the iridescent image swims through a mirror that flows, you would surprise yourself in that other flesh heavy with milt, bruised, battering toward the dam that lips the orgiastic pool.

Come. Bathe in these waters. Increase and die.

If the power were granted you to break out of your cells, but the imagination fails and the doors of the senses close on the child within, you would dare to be changed, as you are changing now, into the shape you dread beyond the merely human. A dry fire eats you. Fat drips from your bones. The flutes of your gills discolor. You have become a ship for parasites. The great clock of your life is slowing down, and the small clocks run wild. For this you were born. You have cried to the wind and heard the wind's reply: "I did not choose the way, the way chose me." You have tasted the fire on your tongue till it is swollen black with a prophetic joy: "Burn with me! The only music is time, the only dance is love."

If the heart were pure enough, but it is not pure, you would admit that nothing compels you any more, nothing at all abides, but nostalgia and desire, the two-way ladder between heaven and hell. On the threshold of the last mystery, at the brute absolute hour, you have looked into the eyes of your creature self, which are glazed with madness, and you say he is not broken but endures, limber and firm in the state of his shining, forever inheriting his salt kingdom, from which he is banished forever. 

― Stanley Kunitz, King of the River