The Road to Character

Friday morning, David Brooks is coming to speak at the college across the way. I am trying to decide whether I am going.

Seeing his name in print puts me in a tailspin--that vermilion cover, the silver bookmark. I took it with me while I waited, and then I left Hillsborough radiology without it; after realizing this I turned around in the Applebee's parking lot to go back and collect it.  I read it as I waited for the very first of the series of tests that would eventually lead to the diagnosis of recurrent, stage IV cancer. Upon my return the staff found it for me at closing time on a Friday. On the way out I took a call from my doctor in the parking lot. We talked about the plan for Monday--an MRI, the possibility of needing to return early to California. So much unknown. Then I drove back out to Applebee's to meet the family for dinner as we celebrated the end of the homeschooling school year. I was done teaching.

Saturday morning we took the train into Manhattan as planned. We went to the top of the Empire State Building, not as planned, but as a surprise treat.

It was a clear day and we could see so far out ahead, in all directions. The breeze and clarity were a gift as I fought to keep my vision from closing in toward the focused tunnel it was becoming, even then. Later, we got on the A 8th Avenue Express by accident and went all the way up to 145th street. How we laughed at ourselves. And then back down, 64 blocks (on another train). We walked and museum-ed and picnicked in the park and later went downtown.

Saturday we played and Sunday we went to church. I stood at the front and read off-book from the first half of Isaiah 6.

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!” 

When I went back for the MRI on Monday, I took the book back with me. As I waited, I waded through a section on suffering. I read:

"...Suffering gives people a more accurate sense of their own limitations, of what they can control and not control. ..Suffering, like love, shatters the illusion of self-mastery...It teaches that life is unpredictable and that the meritocrat's efforts at total control are an illusion. 

Suffering, oddly, also teaches gratitude. In normal times we treat the love we receive as a reason for self-satisfaction (I deserve to be loved), but in seasons of suffering we realize how undeserved this love is and how it should in fact be a cause for thanks. In proud moments we refuse to feel indebted, but in humble moments, people know they don't deserve the affection and concern they receive."

I remember pausing, thinking that I was going to need to remember that.

I was soon called back for my MRI and later drove back to our home. As it turned out, the ink wouldn't be dry on the radiologist's report before I had an airline ticket back to Los Angeles for the following day. I spent the evening packing up what I could of our year in Princeton; the book was not able to come along. After finally getting to my turn at the top of the waiting list for it at the Princeton library, it was to be returned unfinished, along with the other books from my nightstand.

In the scope of the mourning that I have done, unfinished books seem such a little thing. In many ways they are. My year has been such a one as to accrue many similarly seemingly inconsequential losses (and just a few larger ones)--the sum of which happens to be nothing more or less than the loss of life as I was expecting, planning, assuming it to be. Whatever that was.

There are pros to this, as well as cons. Unfinished books are not the same as unfinished stories. Now when I head out to drive carpool I often mutter or shout "Living the dream!"--stealing a line from my sister--because I am so grateful to be doing what I am doing, and for the hope that more days are coming. There are twists and turns in the road, and that is something we all have in common. "This is not the end, but it is the road." And it goes on.

Brooks was right; I have been deeply grateful for many things. I think I will go tomorrow, after all.