Who Needs Lexapro When a Crowded House Cures All?

In which this old house once again contains the full contents of my heart, and both (house and heart) are all but bursting at the seams . . .

All hail the real estate gods who have messed up the books big time, and effectively kicked both our progeny out to the curb, leaving them no roof under which to spawn their nighttime dreams save for that of this old house.

And this ol’ house is doing its part, I tell you. We’ve got wicker chairs, a quartet of em, parading through the dining room. And an extra couch, till a last-minute storage pod came to the rescue, was due to seek safe harbor for the next six weeks in the living room where once it reigned supreme and solo. (It was upstaged in an upgrade years ago, and has been the orphan couch since then, roaming shadowlike behind the one who now claims it as his own.) Swapped out for the couch, a living room now stuffed to the gills with two stationwagons’ worth of Millennial accumulation.

There is nothing sinister afoot. Merely the ellipses that sometimes come when where you live gets tangled.

In our case, it’s straightforward enough: a pipe burst three floors above the professor’s newly-purchased pad and put a halt to the laying down of hardwood floors, which put a halt to a truckful of furniture making its way this way. So he’s retreated to the old room at the bend in the stairs, the one where long ago he learned to shave, to tie a tie, to stay up late into the night declining Latin nouns and generally dilly-dallying. And, then, just yesterday, the lease ran out on the other one’s abode, and the old rectory into which he and lifelong pals are moving will not be theirs till mid-September.

So this old house is chuffing again at full capacity. And little could make me merrier. Dinners for four. A fridge that won’t stay filled. Damp towels flung onto hardwood floors. It’s the equation of mirth to this ol’ mama.

Especially so just now.

I once again find myself in that netherworld just before a scan, when I do not know what stirs. And, after all these many years of doomsdaying, I’m rather skilled at imagining the worst. Which makes the noisy presence here of those I dearly love all the more delicious. (And last night’s good-night chorus the soothingest sound my soul could sing.)

Blessedly, that knife’s edge on which I perch at doctor-prescribed intervals has not dulled. Every three to four months they peer into my lungs to see what stirs. And in the preamble, in the days before I climb aboard the gurney, I am launched into Super-Seize the Day (another name for wide-eyed worried). I gaze upon the world in high-grade technicolor. And all is extra luscious. The greens are greener, the summer’s breeze breezier. And the sunsets, more unforgettable than ever. Even the taste of a teeny-tiny, almost-August blueberry all but bounces off the walls of my hungry little maw.

But the best, the best, is how deeply much my heart cannot get enough.

I feel that little vessel all but lunging from my chest: I can’t listen intently enough to whatever is the banter of the day, cannot immerse myself more fully in the moment. In the sheer and unadulterated joy of simply soaking in the wonder of finding myself inside the very same place and time frame as the ones who most accelerate my heart.

I’ve come to see these periodic immersions—these dawns before the scans—as plunge pools for presence. Presence, as in Be in the Now. Or, dipping back into the ‘70s and good ol’ Yogi Ram Dass, it’s Be Here Now, baby.

Admittedly, fear is my propellant, overabundantly so. I am adept at scaring myself awake. And though I need to make it otherwise, I am for now working with what I’ve got.

To wit, I find myself turning to that great Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, whose wisdom here is introduced by my modernday buddha, Maria Popova, who writes:

“This notion of presence as the antidote to fear and the crucible of love is as old as the human heart, as old as the consciousness that first felt the blade of anticipatory loss pressed against the exposed underbelly of the longing for connection. It is at the center of millennia-old Buddhist philosophy,” so taught by Zen Buddhist master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh.

And here Hanh steps in, drawing from the pages of his 2014 guide to mindful living, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm, he offers the first of four mantras to transform fear into love:

“The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence. So the first mantra is very simple: ‘Dear one, I am here for you.’”

He goes on to explain: “When you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence. How can you love if you are not there? Come back to yourself, look into [their] eyes, and say, ‘Darling, you know something? I’m here for you.’ You’re offering [them] your presence.”

Minus the Darling, I am practicing presence. I am practicing the spellbound art of loving wholly those in whose presence I find myself, blessedly find myself.

For I do not know—not a one of us knows—how long this presence might last.

Audre Lord, the poet, essayist, and civil rights leader, gets the last word here, for hers are words that capture and echo the beginning through the end of so much of what I believe.

Lord was diagnosed with liver cancer in February 1984, seventeen days before she turned fifty, and six years after a mastectomy for breast cancer. She declined treatment, didn’t even want a biopsy, but chose instead to live her days fully, fully present.

In jottings from her diary, eventually published under the title A Burst of Light and Other Essays (2017), Lord included this (emphasis mine):

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”

She lived nearly another decade after her diagnosis (a fact I cling to as if a holy grail). In an African naming ceremony shortly before her death at fifty-eight, she took the name Gamda Adisa, “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.”

Let us make our meanings known. And let us do so emphatically embracing holy, holy presence. Presence in the face of those we most wildly, wholly love.

How will you be present this fine day?

At this old house, herewith begins the annual Leo the Lion parade: 2-4-6-8. Dad (who would be 98); beloved brother DPM; BK, my life’s beloved; and, bringing up the band, sweet Teddy who will mark a quarter century of his rare brand of magnificence. Happy blessed day and days to each and all of you. I love you madly, bam