Tennis in the heat, weird dreams in bed

At my happy place, Holyoke Canoe Club

I dreamt I was in Atlantic Beach (Long Island) site of idyllic summer days. My father was gone. My mother didn’t own the house anymore but had an agreement with the woman who did own it that we could use it on weekends. We went for a weekend. I planned to run on the boardwalk and take a walk with my mother. 

We heard that the woman was coming earlier than expected, with her kids. I have seen this woman before in my dreams. She isn’t nice. She wants to rearrange the furniture. We have to “butter her up” so she lets us continue to use it. I say to one of her daughters, “I grew up playing kickball in these streets. I need to keep coming back.” 

She says she will take care of it. But they want us to leave early. There will be no time for the run or the walk. I ask my mother if we can stay an extra couple of hours and maybe hang out with our neighbors, the Lublins. It doesn’t seem likely.

In another part of the dream, I am down at the ocean. It is supposed to be calm. But the waves are rough. A tidal wave approaches. I dive into it, then come up for air. I run to dry land, into a room, but the water seeps through. Then I am standing under an overhang. The wave crashes over it. Tiny droplets fall onto my head. Tidal wave dreams seem to be about surging emotions. I have a lot of variations. I think I did OK in this one.

I also dreamt that I walked into my mother’s jewelry store and stood back in shock when I saw my aunt Cinny behind the counter. I thought, “But you’re dead!” When I walked closer, I saw that it was a woman with red hair, with a strong resemblance to my aunt. 

Out of the blue, a voice said, “You believe in Jesus!”

I said, “I do not believe he is the son of God, but I do believe he was a good man.”

NEWSPAPER DREAM alert! 

My friend and editor Mimi thinks I should stop already, but I don’t know how to tell my subconscious to get out of there.

In the dream, I went into the newspaper office and talked to some reporters who were there. I asked if (managing editor) Wayne would let me write three reviews a week. I said I really missed being in the office and would even do it for free. A reporter said they were letting go, not hiring. I decided to go to the library to look for other newspapers that might accept a review. Then I remembered that I was a freelancer and could pitch anywhere I wanted.

In real life, I have been playing a lot of pretty good tennis. It is a little crazy to do this in the heat. It is of course not good for my skin. But I don’t see how you play tennis this summer without getting sun. I finally found a relatively comfortable sun protection shirt, made in Australia. I wear sun protection gloves. I use sunscreen. It is my therapy and so I continue to do it.

I have skipped a couple of George’s Wednesday clinics at the Canoe Club in favor of yoga with Meghan at the Hampshire Y. The clinics are like summer camp for adults, and a lot of fun, but it is also so much sun despite starting out on George’s “air conditioned” court near the river. He makes it really difficult if you say you need to leave early. (I know, I’m a big girl, but if you know George, you’ll know what I mean about how hard it is to do the opposite of what he says. Note to self: Next time just do it, to save your skin.) Also: Do not neglect the yoga. It provides an important balance.

I had to play singles in a summer league match. I haven’t played singles in a long time. I have a claim to fame in winning at the Districts in singles. A long long time ago.

When I was practicing on the Mount Holyoke courts, I chatted with the coach running the summer tennis camp. I told him I was a little nervous about playing singles. He said, “I always tell people, 'You’re a tennis player, not a singles or doubles player.'" That made an impression.

Out on the court, I said “bounce, hit,” a method I learned from reading The Inner Game of Tennis. It helps quiet mental chattering and calm nerves. I reminded myself that I was strong. I fixed my strings (not really because there is nothing to fix; it is just another technique that improves focus.) I bounced around on my toes, despite getting tired. It helped me keep energized.

We played the whole two hours. I have to admit that by the end, my back was stiffening up. 

I won in two sets, in a “timed match,” meaning we ran our of time when I was ahead by two games at 5-3. I think I won the first set 7-5, but it is mushing in my memory with last night’s winning match in the heat, this time doubles, with my summer team, the Paper Dolls, with a fun partner. I had already played in the morning with a regular Monday group. When we stopped, the sweat was dripping into my eyes to the point where I couldn’t see.

I mentioned to my partner that at Dana-Farber, my home-away-from-home, they wouldn't be happy about all the sun on my skin. I can't remember who knows what.

She asked if I was in treatment. I have a good nutshell summary that consists of past leukemia and current side effects including problems with my skin. If there is time and it seems appropriate, I throw in four bone marrow transplants. She said you would never know it.

When we were done, I walked very slowly out of  Forest Park . You could say I trudged. I headed straight to Friendly's for a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.  By the time I got it, that ice cream tasted pretty great.

Playing tennis, tasting wine, standing on chairs

Tennis friends at Black Birch Vineyard

Last night I stood up on a chair to get a bud vase for a pink rose that a tennis friend gave us to mark the year anniversary of her mother's death. We all raised a rose to our mothers, on this earth or not, but always with us.

For a moment I considered whether I should do it but then realized that I could. Normally this would not be a big deal, but I thought back to my progression from hardly being able to stand up and sit down in a chair, to in no way having the strength or balance to climb up on one, to now having strong enough leg muscles to be able to do it.

I put the rose on the table next to the zinnias I picked from the garden. I can't believe how tall they got. One is almost as tall as I am. When I cut them I could hear my mother say, "Don't be afraid to cut them," meaning make sure to bring them in so you can enjoy them. At the beach, she had flowers everywhere. She was especially proud of her roses.

The rose-giving happened yesterday at Black Birch Vineyard in Southampton. It was our second year going to this beautiful place. We brought a picnic to have along with wine: either a glass or a wine tasting. I remembered the wine I liked from last year but did the wine tasting anyway. I'm not a wine connoisseur but had fun learning the proper way of tasting. I did two of the whites twice because I didn't want the reds and played a game of turning my back and guessing when I sipped. I got the Epic White right (pear tastes and other fruity nuances but not too sweet), yay, and went ahead and bought a bottle. Or two.

Flowers keeping company

Before we went, we played tennis at the Rogers Field next to Holyoke High School. It was the sister teams, Holyoke's Paper Dolls and Valley Dolls from the summer league. I'm not playing as much team tennis as I used to, but I still like playing some because otherwise I would miss the camarederie and little outings like these.

But informal tennis like we played is in many ways more fun.

For example, when an opponent lost a game on a double fault, I made up a rule: no double-faulting to lose the game.

Similarly when we play at the Canoe Club, we occasionally ask for another chance if we do something really stupid. You wouldn't do this all the time or else we would never finish. But on Wednesday the wind totally took a ball that was coming towards my backhand. Since I had been working on that shot (no bent elbow), I asked for another, moved up closer, and made the shot.

This would be a week off from going to Boston, but this morning I have a dermatology appointment. I have some new spots, and I would be pleasantly surprised if at least one or two were not squamous cells.

Taking it literally one step at a time

It's not often that people use the word literally correctly.

They might say, "I was literally freezing to death," and you think, "Really?" or perhaps, "I was literally at the end of my rope," and you wonder, "What rope"?

I am happy, therefore, to have this opportunity to use the word correctly, because I am literally talking about steps.

Going up or down without a handrail has remained a challenge. I thought of this over the weekend when I was at a graduation party at a house with two steep steps – with no handrail – leading to the deck. I probably could have ventured up, but instead I asked for an arm, just to be sure.

During my trip last year to visit my cousins in the San Francisco area, I was happy to successfully climb the 378 steps (plus or minus) to the landmark Coit Tower. Luckily there were handrails most of the way up, and for the other parts, one of my cousins offered an arm.

I haven't actually tripped down a flight of stairs, although I did actually trip up the stairs in the Paris Metro after having the fool-hardy urge to catch an incoming train. I bellyflopped onto the train, scaring the living daylights out of Katie and earning a shocked look from the Parisian at whose feet I had landed.

Knowing my tendency to fall (which I haven't done lately, knock wood), Joe once reprimanded me for throwing a pair of sneakers down the stairs when my arms were otherwise full. He was afraid that the clamor had been me.

The New York subway, which I plan to take during my visit to the city next weekend, is not the easiest place to need a handrail, because sometimes you have to push your way through to get to the side.

But the stairs leading up to the post office in Holyoke are just right. I had to be in Holyoke for something else, and I decided to go to the post office there rather than in South Hadley, because for some unfathomable reason, easy access to the entrance was eliminated during a highway widening project some years ago.

Rather than go to one side or another so I could use the handrail, I walked up the seven or eight stairs in the middle. I kept my balance. I walked up without tripping, and I walked down trippingly.

Literally, a success.

Critter capture, swimming pool serenade

The critter turned out to be a squirrel.

No big deal. I was actually happy to see it and discover that it was not a rat. It got caught in the trap that was in the living room near the beam with the gap around it. It was turning in circles, rattling the bars of its prison. I went into the kitchen for a few minutes, and when I returned, it had curled up in the back and gone to sleep.

I put the trap on the porch, and the critter control guy said he'd come get it later and release the squirrel away from here. He's going to come back and fill in the gap around the beam.

It was pouring yesterday, too nasty to get a good walk in with Maddie. My knees and feet still hurt, which is discouraging. I am going to increase my Neurontin dose, which hopefully will help with the neuropathy, but that's only part of my problem. It's been more than a week since I overdid it on the treadmill, and although I'm walking better, I'm still nowhere near being able to run or play tennis.

So at the Y yesterday, I did a combination of water jogging and laps. Nobody was in the pool, and the lifeguard was just sitting there with obviously nothing to do. I noticed he had a ukelele by his side, and I asked if he would play it to ease the boredom of water jogging. He picked it up and began to play as I slid into the water. He was quite good.

A friend who had returned from an island vacation talked the other night about the warm water and temperatures. I have to admit I was a little jealous. But as the lifeguard played his beautiful music and the small waves lapped around me, my pain dissolved, and I had to smile.

I had driven only about 10 miles to Holyoke, but if I closed my eyes, I could be near a warm beach, serenaded as I swam.

The lifeguard played the whole time I was in the water. On my way out I thanked him, ready to face the dreary day.

Bites from the past

     Above, granola and the newspaper make a nice start to 

         the day. Below, Margaret gathers some of the ingredients.

When I moved to Western Massachusetts for a job at the former Transcript-Telegram in 1979, I lived in a funky apartment in Northampton. The paper, in Holyoke, Mass., was a good little daily. The place was lively, filled with smart, mostly young reporters and editors who worked (and played) hard. This was in the days of typewriters, and at deadline, there was a cacophony of reporters banging on keys and ripping out pieces of paper. There was a rush for the one OCR (optical character reader) where you had to feed in your stories and then a rush for the couple of computer terminals where you needed to read your story before passing it on to an editor. 

But the reason for this post is not to wax nostalgic about the good old days of journalism – we did have our fun – but to talk about a connection to this era: granola.

The funky apartment fit my tastes nicely. The landlord had never gotten around to putting doors on the kitchen cabinets, but I kind of liked that unfinished look. It was in that kitchen that I grew bean sprouts in a  jar on the windowsill and made my own granola. I can't remember where the recipe came from.

I met my friend Margaret at the paper, and we formed a lifelong friendship even though we didn't work together very long. We were both there for only a couple of years before going to bigger newspapers, but it was so intense it seemed like much longer.

This winter, when I was in the hospital waiting for my transplant, Margaret was going through some recipes when she found the one for granola (recipe below). She hadn't made it in over 30 years, but she made a batch and brought me a jar. It was delicious! (Ah, and yes, it brought remembrances of things past.) Not too long ago, I called her house and got her husband, Nick, who said Margaret was busy "making Ronni's Granola." I got all excited and thought she was making me another jar, but really he was just using the name of the recipe. When I told her my misunderstanding, she did, of course, make me a jar which she brought to the infusion room one day when I was getting platelets. (She lives and works in the Boston area.)

Now that I have a little energy back, I've made it myself a couple of times. There was a gap in between both times, and after the second batch came out at around 11 p.m., I devoured a bedtime snack of granola and blueberries. 

On the health front, I went to the clinic Friday instead of my usual Monday, due to availability of platelets. My platelet count was 10. Well, at least it wasn't in the single digits. White count was stable, but hematocrit had dropped to a borderline 25-ish, after I was so happy it was 31 on Monday. I could have gotten blood Friday, but I actually feel OK, so I'm going to wait until next week. Katie drove home while I slept off the Benadryl. 

Here's the recipe for what we now call Ronni's and Margaret's Granola

6 cups old fashioned oats (not quick cook)

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup wheat germ

1/4 cup shelled sunflower seeds

1/4 cup shelled pumpkin seeds

3/4 cup halved cashews or slivered almonds

1/2 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup sesame cooking oil

1/2 cup honey or maple syrup

1/3 cup water

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Mix liquids and salt over heat

Pour over dry stuff and stir thoroughly until coated

Spread out on two greased cookie sheets

Bake at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour; check frequently and turn at least once

Add 1 cup raisins or cranberries

Talking Turkey Race makes me want to run

I took this photo at Holyoke's Ashley Reservoir with my
cell phone while walking there with a friend a few weeks
ago. Today, runners will pack the trail.

Holyoke's 30th annual Talking Turkey 6-Mile Cross Country Race, taking place today, is expected to draw close to 1,300 runners.

I won't be there, but I will be thinking about it.

That race, which circles the beautiful Ashley Reservoir, is a must-do for many area runners, along with March's St. Patrick's Road Race, also in Holyoke.

I've run the Talking Turkey many times. It has a special resonance for me: When I ran it in 2005, it marked my comeback to racing after my chemotherapy and stem cell transplant in 2003. I wrote about the events leading to the race, and about what it meant for me, in a piece for the New York Times magazine's Lives page.

I was just talking to my friend Emily about it. She said, "Next year, right?"

That's my goal, along with one day getting back to the St. Pat's race, a hilly 10-k.

Whatever you're trying to come back to, you figure out different ways to build back up. (I admire you Pilates people. Ouch. I couldn't do it.) Tennis came back easily this past summer and fall, probably because, unlike running, it allows for frequent stopping to catch your breath, and in doubles, it has the built-in capacity for shouting "Yours!"

When coming back to running after each of my three Caesareans and my first round against leukemia, I tried two approaches. First, of course, I walked, slowly, and then aerobically, until I got to the point where I thought I could jog.

After the babies were born, I just went straight at it and ran the half-mile or mile (I can't remember exactly which). After leukemia, I took the walk/run route; quarter-mile walk, quarter-mile run, for about a mile until I could do one mile at a time. The rest followed naturally, as I built back up to my usual level of six miles or so on weekends and shorter distances during the week, mixed in with tennis, yoga, weights, biking, and, oh yes, did I mention my full-time job?

With my hematocrit currently about 28 (normal is 34.8-43.6) I actually feel fine, but I obviously don't have it in me to do more than a fast walk with maybe a few minutes or so of jogging between trees. So, I guess I need to be patient. It's not always easy, but of course we all need to remember to be thankful for what we can do rather than spending too much time fretting over what we can't do.

I wonder what approach others have taken to getting back to running or whatever activity that makes them feel like themselves.

Runners at the Talking Turkey Race usually get a really nice long-sleeved mock turtleneck. The last year I ran it, in 2006, they gave something a little different: a maroon fleece vest that I wear all the time. This year, for the 30th anniversary, they're giving out something super-special: a windbreaker. Sigh. I'd really have liked one of those. Sure, you can buy your own windbreaker, but it's not the same as earning it at a race. And as most runners know from an unwritten code, you can't wear the T-shirt or windbreaker or vest or whatever unless you finish the race. Not that I need any more T-shirts, but I do need to at least have a plan about how to get back to running.

Runners and their Races

The photo at right is of me finishing 

the St. Patrick's Race in the 1980s.

Most runners have a race they feel is their own. The St. Patrick's Race in Holyoke, Mass., a challenging 10K, is no more my race than it is that of the approximately 2,500 runners who run it every year a day before the city's big St. Patrick's Day Parade. But when people mention the race, I say, "Oh, that's my race." It's not because of my speed. I'm not especially slow, and not especially fast, but I am committed. I think my best time was 52 minutes. I'm not one of those people who keeps a log of race times. I look it up every year, but I never write it down. I have lost count of how many times I've run it, but it's probably around a dozen.

I started in the 1980s with friends from the former Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, a good little newspaper that lived and breathed the race, the parade, and the colleen coronation ball, which I remember as being the time when my strapless bra fell down around my knees during a dance. We went to the race for the fun, the festivities, the camaraderie and the challenge. At that time the race was longer by about two miles, following the hilly 

road that cuts through Holyoke Community College. They lopped 

off that extra challenge to attract more participants.
I took a break from the race after each of my children was born, and 

each time felt that I had finally come back when I could do the race again.

After my leukemia went into remission, I ran the race twice -- last year and the year before. For reasons that I will explain later, I couldn't run the race this past Saturday, when it attracted a record-breaking number of participants, more than 3,000. I did, however, go for a little jog at 1 p.m., the time the race started.

Our area has two big races: St. Pat's and, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the Talking Turkey race, six miles around a beautiful reservoir also in Holyoke. My friend was raped at that reservoir, and for her, running that race was proof that she was stronger than her fears.

Similarly, when I returned to St. Pat's, the race that led me to the discovery that I had leukemia, I felt like I was facing some kind of demon and also celebrating a rebirth. I was nervous, excited and scared, all at once. Most importantly, I was a runner, not a patient. And when I finished, at a little over an hour, my mixed reactions showed me that I was thinking like a runner, too.
First came the exhilaration of crossing the finish line. Then came the critical thinking.
"I feel pretty good," I thought. "I could have gone a little faster. Well, maybe next year."