Basics

It all comes down to the single spoon and the slanting sun.

The spoon idea comes from my friend Phila.  This, she says, is the essence of the outdoor experience.  Camping reduces the available options in a way that is unavoidable, instructive and unburdening.  It is a relief to find that no one has to do the dishes after dinner at, say, Tuolumne Meadows, 3000 meters up the mountains of Yosemite.  The reason couldn't be simpler.  There are no dishes.  There is the dish.  Just as there is the spoon.  There is the meal, there is the eating and, afterwards, there is the purposeful deconstruction, designed to make the spoon and the dish ready for the meal on the morrow.  A.k.a. washing up, locking the butter in a bear-proof container, if there is such a thing.  And that's it.  

I understand what Phila means.  At that altitude, I recall from my campouts as a 10-year-old, frost forms on a sleeping bag overnight.  Staying warm at night, producing any kind of hot food during the day, not getting lost in the wilderness...these were the pressing concerns just below timberline.  One spoon would do.

Marlou was confiding in her oncologist this very afternoon -- and it must be said that Marlou's oncologist invites confidences, such is her personal gift -- that aspects of dealing with terminal disease are an actual relief.  Instead of betting on your investments' rate of return in 2011, you're not betting on 2011 at all.  Will the new maple tree outgrow its spot in the garden?  What about all those friends we haven't sent cards to?  What about the people we owe...dinner or attention or whatever?  

There is another side to not seeing tomorrow.  You don't have to worry about tomorrow.  That is the doctor's point.  Which is actually broader.  That we never have to worry about these things.  Not really.  Yes, certain things need to be done, but there aren't all that many.  There are a few true obligations.  And the rest are false.  Convention, habit, guilt.  These things keep us running on automatic, pleasing others, forgetting that time is always short or, at least, extremely uncertain.  For Marlou, uncertainty has become certain.  Frightening and confusing and endlessly unsettling, even for those around her.  But we have to take good news where we can.  And this is the trick.  Let go.

It's also the trick with quadriplegia.  Marlou has more or less sworn me to promise to never eat straight from the saucepan after she is gone.  It's like Scarlet O'Hara's famous vow to never eat another root again.  Problem is, saucepans have a handle.  And the shallow ones look strangely like bowls.  So a bachelor's logic being what it is, and one-handed life being what it is, grabbing something with a handle is a definite plus.  And not having to do the manual-intensive transfer of food from one site to another is an indescribable attraction.  With all these built-in benefits, the shallow stainless steel saucepan looks awfully good at dinnertime when Marlou happens to be out.  

Still, a promise is a promise.  My only hope is that Marlou will release me from this one.  Or we'll find a compromise.  This seems a distinct possibility with all the stripping down and simplifying currently underway around here.  A ceramic dish with a handle.  Some kind of stovetop pan that is equipped with a handle, perhaps removable, and absolutely table ready.  I let go of certain niceties a long time ago.  The quadriplegic's major goal in the kitchen, any kitchen, is not to burn himself too badly, unfeeling limbs being what they are.

Which brings us to the sun.  In Northern California winters it slants low, of course.  And no one expects to be sipping a double latte outside in January.  But that's what Marlou and I did after we emerged from Palo Alto's oncology clinic.  The weather, unaccountably warm, had everyone outside.  There was a Peet's coffee outpost nearby, and that's where we headed, to join others in the winter sun.  Marlou and I hadn't done anything like this in quite a while.  Cancer has brought Marlou a certain level of pain and the sense of incessant, unwelcome, bodily change.  All this has frightened both of us.  We spent the last weekend huddling inside.  But now, invigorated by the oncologist's words, there was no doubt about the next destination.  Sure, the pharmacist was preparing a batch of painkillers, and we could wait in his carpeted lounge for 20 minutes or so.  Or hurtle in the general direction of double lattes.

It's the small things.  But they aren't really small.  They are simply overlooked.  They get bad PR.  But they are joys.  Sunny warmth on the skin, a moment outdoors at a time of year when one expects to be inside with the central heating.  The ability to smile at each other, to relax, and for me, to appreciate Marlou's singular beauty.  It's in her face and her capacity for warmth and, yes, her extraordinary courage.  Fortunately, it's also in her humor, for we were laughing at the frantic Mercedes and BMWs scurrying about the Palo Alto parking lot.  What is worth honking about at 3 PM, driving between shops?  These people don't have cancer.  And they don't have quadriplegia.  And they don't have what we do, and it's all worth laughing about, worth enjoying, worth every moment.