Slowing Down to Catch Up with You

The email came from my 81-year-old father just after my last class on a Friday: the hormone treatments for his prostate cancer had stopped working, and his doctors wanted him to start chemo. Pretty much immediately. He would have a week of tests, and an orientation class, and then would have his first treatment a week from Thursday. He reported this in his usual upbeat, matter-of-fact tone. He was still feeling fine, he said, but the PSA (prostate cancer blood test) numbers were going up, and now the cancer had spread, not only to the bone but to the lymph nodes. I sat for a full few minutes staring at the computer screen. Not good not good not good—my mind jumped on its hamster wheel of worry. I wanted to reply immediately – I wanted to compose a heartbreakingly simple yet profound expression of care and love and encouragement. Needless to say, my mind wasn’t up to that task, or anything close. I emailed a brief acknowledgement, a note of concern, a chipper note of confidence echoing his bright tone, and a promise to call soon. Several paces around the house, and a few mindless chores later, I picked up the phone and we talked a while. He was in wonderful spirits. His voice sounded a notch higher in pitch due to his previous medications, but otherwise conveyed the same combination of stoicism and reassurance that he always has for everyone and everything. Like the medieval English saint Julian, his message was “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Halfway through one sleepless night, I padded back to the computer and logged onto my travel web site. I had to get up there. Now! Reason and finances tempered my urge for drama, and I booked a good weekend flight for two weekends later. The timing would be good. He would have had one treatment and would have a little more sense of how the chemo would go, and how many rounds they would prescribe. I could see how he and my mom were doing. Mostly, though, I knew the trip was for me. If I could see both my parents, if I could connect face-to-face, I could replace anxious worry with fact, and I would not feel so helplessly distant, living 1,000 miles to the south of my childhood home. Maybe I could even do something to help, rather than sitting on the sidelines. Even though I continually teach my pastoral counseling students the value of being and not just doing, I felt the familiar urge: Get up and do something to fix this! Knowing that was not possible, I would settle for being there, and doing at least a little to make things easier, if I could. I booked my flight and waited impatiently for the days to pass until I was on the plane to Boston.

The visit was wonderful. After just a few days of initial side effects, my father said he was feeling just fine and insisted (of course!) on picking me up at the airport. We drove up the shore to the house, and after some initial chit-chat with my parents, we went to the grocery store with a list I had prepared in advance, to cook up a storm on Saturday and stock up packets of ready-made dinners in the freezer for any really hard days ahead. That first night, though, I just cooked an easy meal of pasta and salad, and we spent the evening watching TV, reading, chatting, and dozing in the living room. Saturday morning I woke up to a light snowfall, and again we spent the morning curled up in various chairs reading and talking about the latest news of the town, people I’d gone to school with, or had as teachers, various kindnesses and annoyances experienced lately from neighbors and town residents.

For many years, my father and I have had a habit of taking a walk at least once during my visits. The next morning, after whipping up a lunch of Chef Boyardee—their Saturday favorite—he invited me to accompany him to the post office about a mile and a half away. The snow had stopped, and the sun shone weakly through a low filter of clouds, but it was about 28 degrees without the wind chilld. “Sure,” I said, “as long as you have a hat I can borrow!” Normalcy. Talk. I couldn’t wait. My father produced a bulky fleece cap with both visor and ear flaps in fashionable navy blue. We bundled up and took off. Once out the door, I assumed my usual Manhattan pace (whether I am in New York or far from it), and my father, feeling robust as ever, fell in beside me.

The first part of the walk was a steep downhill to the oceanfront street that spans the town, and we did slow our pace to stop at some of our usual spots. We paused to remember who lived in the white house with the porch that had obscured our postage stamp ocean view when it was built in the 1950’s and later housed a classmate of mine, a sometime “frenemy,” co-editor of the high school literary magazine, who ended up being a doctor, and then dying of AIDS. We stopped at the circular road before the precipitous drop ahead, where there was a view of the slate gray ocean, a once ramshackle bungalow now lavishly renovated, and the home of the classmate who was such a computer genius and renegade that the government eventually hired him to stay one step ahead of the hackers… Suddenly I noticed as we trotted down the hill that my father was no longer by my side. I stopped and looked back. “Am I going to fast for you?” “Yes,” he stated plainly. I waited for him to catch up. “I guess my age is catching up with me a little,” he grinned.

We continued on. Man, was it cold! My lips started to go numb and my speech sounded like a hardened drunk’s as we continued on our way, now taking the pace slower…and slower still. At about the halfway point, almost to the post office, I was in desperate need of a warm space and some coffee. Refusing my suggestion that we stop in a tiny pizza joint, my father pointed to a nicer bistro across the street. We went in and sat at the bar to order coffees and a basket of fries. As we warmed up on our perches overlooking the ocean, we had the Talk we always try to fit in at some point during each visit. How things are going—really!—and then ranging across all manner of social and philosophical matters. Warmed inside and out, we braved the rest of the trip to the post office, taking the less steep way back home, skirting mounds of dirty snow and patches of gray ice until we were back on the street where I grew up.

The last few blocks were a slight challenge for Dad. I slowed my pace once more, and took his arm on the last hill toward the house. “I think the chemo has made my legs a little weak,” he remarked, and I couldn’t disagree. We continued on, closing the distance to home, warmth, and rest.

On our last leg home, I remembered a conversation 15 years earlier with my daughter when she was still a very short person, a 4-year-old. Macrina and I would often walk to the playground a block from our house in those days—a comfortable suburb not so different from the town I grew up in, but about 1,000 miles to the west, where the nearest coastline was one of the Great Lakes and not the briny, aromatic ocean. Then, as now, my work life produced a very full to-do list, and an equally crammed schedule (although parenting was a big part of the patchwork of my life in those days, unlike my current status as an “empty nester”). Before Macrina’s birth, I was used to a pretty hard-charging life, traveling a lot, working long hours without interruption, staying up late for operas, movies, pizza, or grant writing—whatever was on the agenda. Having a baby definitely slowed me down, "¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬in the nicest way possible.” But I admit it – there were times when I would have liked to just get where I was going, not have to slow my pace to a toddler’s gait, or stop to admire the “Angelina Ballerina” book in a store window, or play the “don’t step on a crack” game. Of course, I tried to stifle any impatience, and usually would follow her orders. (After all, it was my back that would get cracked if I stepped on a crack!) If I ever picked up the pace too much with my longer stride, she would definitely let me know. Walking to the park one day, as I started drifting back into the fast lane, preschool Macrina gave me a mantra I would keep for life: “Mom! Slow down so you can catch up with me!”

Remembering Macrina’s admonition, I fell back in pace with my dad, and we walked the last block in companionable quiet. The lessons I learned as a mother came back to me with full force. Speed up, and sometimes you lose. Speed up, and you might just end up by yourself at the finish line of a race that nobody was running in the first place. Slow down, and you might learn something profound about the person you’re with—something you would never know if you just sprinted everywhere on some illusory agenda. Slow down, and enjoy the company. This particular day, this particular time in our lives will not come again.

We got home, and rejoined my mother who was quietly enjoying clipping coupons in the living room. Soon my father was in his recliner with a cup of instant coffee, and I was in the kitchen starting my “cook for the future” project. We called back and forth about the progress of our faces thawing. The kitchen window started to steam up, and the smells of meatloaf and salmon casserole filled the house. My father turned on WCRB, and we listened to some Mozart, some Tchaikovsky. Looking over the day, I didn’t “do” much of anything. No work. (Cooking is not work for me, although my mother kept protesting that I was working too hard.) Not one paragraph written, not one student paper graded, not one lesson plan finished, not one email checked (well, OK, not until a quick peek at bedtime). I had curled up with a novel, had canned spaghetti, took a walk, cooked some casseroles and broiled some fish for dinner, ate, watched TV and read again, all in the very quiet company of my parents. No big agenda. Just time spent slowly together in a house that hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. And it was more than enough.

Slow down, Daddy. You don’t have to keep doing everything you’ve always done. Take time to deal with the chemo, fight the cancer, live for the moment and for us. Get out and see your friends whenever you can, and kick back in the recliner whenever you want. I promise to be there when you need me. And no matter what else is going on in my over-scheduled, over-agenda’d life, I promise you what I promised Macrina years ago: I will slow down so I can catch up with you, whenever, and wherever you need me to be.