Always Pack Your Instrument

You might just bring beautiful to the patches of the terrible

Dear Friends —

Thanks to all who’ve checked in on me in recent weeks, curious to know how I'm faring with Princess Leia’s laser beams and all the rest. I’m delighted to report I’m feeling quite well. Better than I have in some time, in fact. Dare I say, normal? Yes, I dare. I’m feeling normal.

As it turns out, the time with Princess Leia and her court isn’t all that awful. I’ve entered her star chamber at UCSF five times now and here’s what happens. First, and I find this fascinating, I enter through this thick double door that I AM NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH for some reason. Instead it clicks open automatically, and I’m greeted by Leia’s lieutenants, who work in this area full of monitors illuminated by this gauzy blue hue from carefully hidden ceiling lights. I mean. It’s a space ship. It has to be.

So then I go deeper into Leia’s chamber and I position myself very carefully on this hard surface, finding just the right spot where I can be as still as humanly possible. After a minute or two, one of the lieutenants has me put on this snorkel like thing in my mouth, pins my nose shut, and puts on goggles where I see a screen showing the arc of each and every one of my breaths.

The lieutenants leave and go back to the deck of their star ship.

It’s then that the miracle of science converges with my every ounce of effort. For the laser beams to hit their itty bitty targets just right, I watch my breath in the goggles, then — when a blue line appears near the top — I hold my breath in that line as long as I can. We do this about 12 times and then I hop off the flat and very hard plank, exit through the door THAT I DO NOT TOUCH, and I cruise along to whatever’s next in my day.

I know. You might want to know my breath holding number, and you’re also curious about your own skills in this department. My average is 75 seconds. I made it to 80 a couple of times. 70 now feels easy. We can credit a mix of adrenaline and the knowledge that each time I hold my breath a smidge longer it takes a few minutes off the time I’m trapped with nose plugs and snorkel gear. It’s good motivation.

I asked one of the lieutenants once if I’m one of their better breath holders. “Yes!” she said. “Oh gosh. Most people in here complain after 20 seconds. You totally rock this!”

“Really? Wow. Gosh, well, you know I try to stay active, even with all that I’ve been through.”

“Right. Well that, and honestly nearly everyone else who does this is usually over 75 years old. So yeah, you’re doing quite well.”

Ok.

Tomorrow is my last session, and then in a few weeks I’ll have a nail biter of a scan to see what might — or might not — be in motion after such a long chemo break.

But back to the main headline: I feel so very well. And what do you do when you’ve been trekking up such a high and mighty mountain during such a gorgeous respite in the mountain meadow? I think the answer is obvious: you take your tall teenagers off to Italy to draw close to as much beauty as possible.

Can you believe it. In what might be the highest spike of the pandemic, Connor, Lucy and I packed up our suitcases, with negative Covid tests and recently renewed passports in hand, and soared across the Atlantic for 10 days in Rome and Florence.

When this chapter of my life began, I remember sharing a favorite quote from Frederick Buechner for my first post: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

Ever since, I’ve been writing here basically about the beautiful and the terrible. It’s never gotten much more complicated than that.

So, Italy. Throughout these days, I’ve had this persistent tug to take my kids to a place that takes beauty as seriously as any place I’ve ever visited. And what better time than during Christmas, when Italy elegantly waves its gorgeous flag to the world, saying, “Here. Come and see. Come see what so much of this splendor and majesty is all about. Come draw as close as you can to hope.”

We walked the Vatican gardens, climbed to the top of St Peter’s and gazed out on a Roman sunset, paid our respects to the Pantheon, stared up at some of the most sacred ceilings on the planet, dodged itty bitty cars, stared at each other in wonder at the Colosseum and while walking through the Forum, marveled at Bernini’s sculptures, ate pizza and gelato, and joined thousands of other Covid-free souls to hear the pope’s message Christmas morning in St Peter’s square.

Then we went to Florence.

As we were on the train, I was reading through some Florence guidebooks I brought along, and spotted a small sentence tucked into overviews of museums and historic sites. “Several scholars agree that, because of the plague, by 1352 the population of Florence had dropped to less than half of what it had been at the start of 1348.”

Half. Half of the population died from a horrific disease over the course of four years.

How does any city recover from that kind of anguish? Does the trauma move from one generation to another, until it doesn’t? Or is it forever ebbed into the ancient cobblestones and frescos?

Maybe more mysterious, how does beauty emerge out of such catastrophic loss?

In Florence, beauty found a way. Michelangelo was born very near Florence in 1475, so he must have grown up hearing stories of the plague, and how his ancestors survived. And then how their children recovered. And how their children rebuilt. And how his generation could reimagine, and renew.

By the time we arrived in Florence, we could feel Omicron concerns growing by the hour. One day, everyone’s masks switched to safer KN95s, and lines formed down ancient blocks to find rapid tests in pharmacies. Museums and galleries began to limit the number of visitors.

As a result, we had an open day without tickets to anything. Just us in Florence, during a pandemic.

We decided to wander around for a while to let Italy surprise us. And so it was, just four blocks from our little airbnb apartment, we came upon three street musicians, playing the kind of jazz riffs I’ve come to know so well from all of Connor’s gigs and school concerts. As we listened, I caught a glimmer in Connor’s eye above his mask, knowing we were thinking the same thing.

“How about you go get your trumpet and see if you can join in?” I asked.

He was off, dashing down the cobblestones seconds after.

Minutes later in the Piazza del Repubblica, Connor cautiously approached the musicians, trumpet in hand, and politely asked to join in.

“Why not?” the guitarist replied in broken English.

What followed next was 25 minutes of this: Jazz improvs, trumpet riffs, a small crowd growing ever larger, coins tossed into a large guitar case, kiddos dancing, parents smiling through masks, and sweet harmonies filling an ancient square.

In a square living through another pandemic, beauty managed to triumph over the terrible. Again.

I honestly don’t know how beauty finds a way through all the trauma that surrounds so many of our days. I occasionally think it’s nearly impossible to see.

But I do know this: pack your instrument. Whatever instrument you have, pack it. Because there could be a moment when you can play your best self in whatever square life calls you to inhabit. Whether it’s an ancient piazza or a spaceship-like room where a life could be saved with laser beams.

And in that moment, when our hearts intertwine with our talents, joy, which is to say life, can find a new way. A beautiful renaissance might begin.

For each of us.

xoxo