Brownie Returns!

Like a lot of kids, I had a favorite stuffed animal when I was young: a small brown dog I called Brownie. Unlike most kids, I didn't get Brownie until I was a teen. At an age when most have grown out of attachment to stuffed animals, I grew into it.

While I don't recall why I wanted a stuffed animal going into junior high, there it is and I became very attached to my little buddy. Not only did I have him next to my pillow all through my remaining years at home, but he was my faithful companion as I:
o  Attended four years at Carelton College (1967-71).
o  Went to Washington for my two-year stint as a junior bureaucrat at the US Dept of Transportation (1971-73).
o  Traveled across country in a motor home for seven months while Annie, Dave Oser, Margaret Loud, and I explored America, a la Charles Kuralt (1973-74).
o  Pioneered Sandhill Farm (1974 onward).

All of that said, somewhere in the mid-80s I lost him. I know Brownie was still a regular occupant of my bed when Ceilee was born (1981) and Annie and I have a picture of them sleeping together in his toddler years. But I changed bedrooms a few times in the 1985-95 era (it's a semi-pro sport in income-sharing communities) and somewhere along the line Brownie got put in a box for "safe keeping" and never resurfaced. Ugh. 

Though I had lost touch with Brownie, the memories remained. When I was in high school, some careless friends were visiting my house one day and decided it would be clever to stuff Brownie into the corner pocket of the pool table in our rec room. When they pulled him out as a surprise, they tore his shoulder. The subsequent suturing was not up to hospital standards and he's been slowly leaking stuffing ever since.

He came factory equipped with a squeaker in one ear (a feature I never enjoyed; I prefer my stuffed animals to be soft all over and mute—unless I'm talking directly to them), and Annie performed a squeakerectomy sometime in the early '70s. Though the operation was a complete success, he retains a worn spot on his ear where the squeaker rubbed the fur off.

For a couple years in the late '90s (1996-98) I dated a yoga instructor who also had stuffed animals: Alex McGee (while I don't think Brown Bear and Gray Bear were a major factor in our getting together, it didn't hurt). When we broke up, the two aspects of our time together that endured the longest were my yoga practice (Alex got me going) and Brown Bear (who came to me in the "divorce").

While Brown Bear (BB) has become well integrated into my life (though he rarely does road trips, he's a steady fixture in my bed), I've made sure over the years that Brown Bear does not suffer the same fate of as the wandering Brownie. This has been made easier in that my wife, Ma'ikwe, came as a package deal with Rufus, a stuffed gray sea lion of approximately the same size and temperament as BB. They hang out together a lot, and we have a stuffed animal friendly bed. In fact, on many mornings we also have one of our Maine Coon cats join us, either Kyre or Galileo. It can be a real menagerie.

The Prodigal Brownie Appears
Last month I made the momentous decision to leave Sandhill (my community home of 40 years) and move in with Ma'ikwe at Moon Lodge, our house at Dancing Rabbit. That meant clearing out all my stuff from Sandhill. Ugh.

Last week, while unpacking one of the myriads boxes pressed into service to facilitate the move, lo and behold I discovered Brownie. Holy shit! Where had he been the last 30 years? I couldn't even imagine how he'd gotten into the box (which was loaded with an array of miscellany from my room) without my knowing it—that crafty old dog.

It happened that this joyous reunion occurred while I was alone (Ma'ikwe, who had never even met Brownie, was in Chicago delivering Jibran to college) so all I did was place Brownie (lovingly) atop the headboard of our marriage bed, where he could get a little fresh air (finally) and survey the whole scene without getting tangled up with Rufus or BB (much less Kyre or Leo). 

Ma'ikwe and I only overlapped a couple days before it was time for me to head East for FIC meetings and the Twin Oaks Communities Conference, and it slipped my mind to tell her about my discovery. In fact, up until a few days ago I hadn't shared this news with anyone. However, once I arrived at Annie's it all came out. You should have seen Annie's jaw drop when I told her that Brownie had resurfaced—it was a resurrection of biblical proportions and she was gobsmacked.

When I skyped my wife yesterday I remembered to tell her about the discovery and Ma'ikwe promptly went into the bedroom and brought the little darlin' out for show and tell. Annie was overjoyed to see the rascal. We still need to give some healing attention to his old shoulder injury, but there will be plenty of opportunity for that this winter. No more time in the penalty box for Brownie!

• • •

As I think about it, it's turned out to be a great fortnight for connections:
—Visiting with dear friend Ella Peregrine in Louisville en route to VA. She's been struggling with Myalgic Enchephalitis the last seven years and it's precious to be with her, even for half a day.—Taking Jenny Upton out to dinner, celebrating all her selfless years of service to FIC.
—Having a power breakfast last Friday with Peter Lazar, who's reviving a cohousing project in the Charlottesville area (on property near Crozet).
—Working the Community Bookstore table at the TO Conference with Elke Lerman, an ex-partner (1986-89) and good friend who is also the mother of my daughter, Jo.
—Catching up with Scott Williams, who used to be part of FIC's Membership Committee back around 2001. He came to the Twin Oaks because he needed to be in the area to help settle his aging mother in a nursing home. He's living happily in Tucson now, and I hadn't seen him in a dozen years.
—Seeing Jake Kawatzki, a long-time member Twin Oaker, who had visited Sandhill any number of times over the decades. He attended the conference and I hadn't seen him since he'd moved to Savannah seven years ago.
—Visiting with Annie for three days before returning home. We share a son (Ceilee) and she's one of my closest friends—going all the way back to Brownie!
—Talking with Ceilee yesterday. He's life has been in turmoil the last 20 months and I had not spoken with him for more than three months. Yikes! It was great to hear his voice and reestablish the primacy of our caring for each other. 

All of that and now I have Brownie, too, the first stuffed love of my life. Life is good.

A Change of Pace

I've just driven to the East Coast where I'll be promoting a new round of facilitation training (in North Carolina starting Sept 27-30), attending FIC Oversight Committee meetings, and participating in the annual Twin Oaks Communities Conference, Aug 30-Sept 3.

En route, I stopped over in Louisville (I've driven straight through from Missouri to Virginia many times over the years, but I no longer have any appetite for marathon driving and I do the trip in two days nowadays) and saw my dear friend Ella Peregrine overnight on Thursday.

For the past four years she's been battling myalgic encephalomyelitis (or ME). This is a refined understanding of what has heretofore more commonly been referred to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The defining symptom of ME is post-exertion neurological exhaustion that is substantially unrelieved by rest, and not triggered by other medical conditions. It is way more than just fatigue.

While I have been following Ella's health for some time simply because she's a friend, I am all the more interested because her journey parallels that of my wife, Ma'ikwe, who has been suffering from persistent low energy for the last six months. To be clear, Ma'ikwe is suffering from chronic Lyme disease and does not have the same diagnosis as Ella, yet their sharply diminished energy budgets are quite similar.

In Ella's case, she can do about two things each week without risking a serious setback—and that's if she's careful not to do too much. For example, she can manage to swim in a pool twice a week if she doesn't add to the strain by driving to the pool. Or she could swim once and go to the library once. If, however, she does the driving, then it's more prudent to only do one of those things a week. If she goes overboard one week, she may have to wait several weeks before she can do any excursions again.

For someone with a vital life force and a strong sense of curiosity—which Ella has in abundance and are the bedrock of our friendship—it is excruciating to have to make such choices and exercise that degree of self-discipline. When I asked her Thursday evening (during the intermission of a lovely outdoor performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore at Iroquois Park—Ella chose to visit with me instead of a trip to the library or a swim this week) how many people diagnosed with ME experience a significant recovery of their health, she reported only about five per cent. Yikes!

Though the medical understanding of ME is evolving and those odds may yet change for the better, it is likely that Ella will never again enjoy the freedom and energy that most of us take for granted every day. While not giving up on the possibility of recovery, she is trying to figure out how to paint a colorful life with a sharply diminished palette (rather than lamenting that the tubes on certain pigments have been prematurely squeezed empty). Ella is an amazing soul and I cherish our opportunities to connect and hear about her journey.

Ma'ikwe's prognosis, fortunately, is much less grim, and I'm thankful for that. While there is considerable murkiness about the course of her illness, she bounces back much better with rest and expects to eventually recover from her debilitating battle—even if we don't know the exact route, or how long it will take to get there.

One of the most precious things I got out of discussing with Ella how she experiences her low energy was the importance of trying to meet the ill person where they are—which is notably different than how you remember them or how they were when you were first drawn together. It's about adopting a pace that works for who you're with, rather than expecting them to meet you where you are. It's also about trying to find the intersection of where I am and where they are with respect to how their illness has impacted their cognitive abilities. This insight is especially valuable for me, who typically goes through life with his foot mashed on the gas, and dances lightly from topic to topic. 

I'm often impatient with repetition and am quick to tell where a sentence is headed before it officially arrives at its destination. Thus, I often have a response queued up before the speaker has arrived at a period. When a story or explanation is interlarded with trivial details, I tend toward irritation, longing for conversation that is graced with clean lines and crisp meaning.

When I contemplate some of the struggles that Ma'ikwe has had with me around her sense that I don't hear her accurately, I suspect that part of the dynamic is my impatience—that I haven't made an adequate adjustment to the slower pace dictated by her illness. Rather than blindly expecting her to cope with my stream-of-consciousness check-in style, I could work on slowing down my electron orbits to match hers and seeing if that might lead to better flow between us. 

While that may seem obvious, it hasn't been. I want my time with Ma'ikwe to be comfortable and familiar. I don't really want to be careful; I want to be natural. Yet maybe I can be more caring without being more careful. It's a distinction I'm taking the time to sit with right now (instead of racing headlong onto the next email in my queue).