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I've always looked up to my older women friends for clues as to what to expect later in life. And here I have it: I am discovering that women seem to have this uncanny ability to have more fun, as they get older. I am all for it, especially considering how late the word "fun" entered my vocabulary, since there's no analogue in either the Latvian or the Russian languages. There are of course words for joy, and for happiness, but nothing quite with such surprising - and healthy - dose of lightness and frivolity that the English "fun" would imply.
For years, Agus, my husband, has insisted that April is the cruelest month. And for years, I disagreed. Until this year came around...
We were in the emergency room, Agus urinating blood and having the worst pain of his life, in his back. A CT scan was performed to confirm kidney stones in action. It also revealed a far more menacing reality: a large mass in his right kidney.
The verdict came brutal and head-on: renal cell carcinoma, or kidney cancer. That day also happened to be the beginning of our infertility treatment cycle, the first day towards a huge hope of having another child. I had just taken my first pill...
I HEAR THE BREAKS SCREECHING.
FULL STOP.
SILENCE.
Agus and I search for each other's eyes... What do you say in those moments? Will he live? How long do we have?........
Minutes, hours, days, weeks of agony, hope, pain, contemplation, procedures, procedures, procedures follow... Some 30 plus days have passed now. The longest days of our lives. Agus has had a successful surgery, and he is on his way to recovery. His tumor, albeit large, mercifully hadn't spread anywhere else, and Agus is now cancer-free! Free to go. Free to live.
I've always remembered to Memento Mori. But these days, all I want to do is, to Memento Vita. Remember Life. Think: LIFE.
So, my dear Agus, yes, April IS the cruelest month. But please allow me to -still- disagree: it has kept you with us.So thank you, April, thank you our dear family, thank you all the compassionate nurses and extraordinary doctors, thank you our many many wonderful friends, and thank you LIFE!
***
What follows is a short photo-essay, 30 Days in Spring, which I submitted for the first annual photography portfolio competition organized by the Women's Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
***
In the depths of our hearts we are together,
in the cane field of the heart we cross through
a summer of tigers,
watching over a meter of cold flesh,
watching over a bouquet of inaccessible skin,
with our mouths sniffing sweat and green veins
we find ourselves in the moist shadow that drops kisses
(From Furies and sorrows by Pablo Neruda)
This series of photographs follows him for 30 days following that day, from the quiet and profound moments of contemplation, through the various diagnostic procedures, his admission to the hospital and the surgery to remove the affected kidney, and to the beginning of his path to recovery.
I have kept my camera at hand, night and day, as if it could protect me, and him, from the inevitable. Taking photographs of my ill husband became my way of recording - and taming - my own agonies and doubts, and recognizing the signs of hope, and the presence of joy.
There were complications after the surgery, and Agustin needed blood transfusions. One day, while waiting for the donors’ blood too arrive, I wandered outdoors, and into a nearby park. It was bursting in its spring attire, life flowing through the veins of the tree branches, feeding colors and shapes into spectacular bloom. There were shapes that were most fragile in their gestures, and there were textures and volumes that spoke of longevity and of indomitable strength.
I was thinking of my husband, as I was walking through this awe-inspiring life factory, and of the frailty of his struggling body, the resilience of his tired mind, and the fervor of his spirit.
Back in my husband’s hospital room, the time seems to stop. There are no seasons. No colors. No sounds. We are - he and I - hermetically sealed into a time capsule, where the only way of being is waiting. And hoping.
He had chosen to struggle quietly, without the arsenals of bravura and drama. He has inspired me through all these days, and keeps on doing so, with his beauty, doing things his own way, full of life, both like a gentle blossom, and a rigid trunk of a worldly mature tree.
Agus and I met with a couple of cool local graphic designers this morning. Their names are Rob and Damia Stewart, the faces behind Rob & Damia Design.
Remarkable work from a young Russian photographer Alexander Gronsky! I love his series of photographs of cities and people at dusk from the borderlines of civilization, such as Endless Night and Chukotka Travel, both under Editorial, and his ephemeral Edges series, found under Artwork. But the collection that struck me most was Town of Brides (Editorial).
Yesterday I resumed my flamenco dance practice. It's been a few years without, that started with a broken toe, and extended into a prolonged time off. I started studying flamenco in '98, with Inés Arrubla, the first dancer to offer flamenco classes in the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts. I jumped at the opportunity as soon as she opened the door of her studio. I guess my passion for flamenco comes first from the guitar sounds. And since I figured I can never learn to play a decent flamenco on the guitar, I can at least try to express it with my body. It has been a wonderful journey. It took some years, not months, without exaggeration, just to get to a point where my body started accepting the flamenco form: head raised high up above the shoulders; shoulders down, chest up and forward, like a bull's horns, elbows having a life of their own, almost always away from the body, feet that work as a percussion, and so on... The hands, in all their myriad of expressions, are by far the most difficult to master. I am still working on it...
