What You Can Do

I keep hearing everyone ask and I keep hearing these answers in my head so I wrote them down in the hopes that now my mind will clear and I can take a nap!!

 What you can do to help.

 Take a walk around your block. When you get home, take a dollar and put it in a walk-the-walk jar. When you have accumulated 10 walk the block dollars wrap them neatly in a plain paper and tape it closed. Place it in an envelope. Then, talk your talk. Some examples; slip it into the hands of someone who looks like they could use it, put it under your bed until you know where to give it.  Send it to an organization you like, like to the SMART program (Start Making a Reader Today).  However you talk your talk with the money you earned walking your walk, let it go freely from your hands with a slow deep breath and free of thought about it falling into the wrong hands, going to the wrong cause, not being enough. Maybe you’ll decide to buy someone an anonymous meal at the restaurant you’re sitting at. Maybe you’ll decide to keep adding to the walk the walk jar until you have enough money for a decent pair of walking shoes. Be creative and free wheeling in your walking and talking and if you don’t have a dollar, find a penny and if you can’t make it around the block, try down the front steps and back. It’s not a rule that can be broken or a request that you can fail to fulfill.  It’s just an idea to answer the question and it sounded kind of fun.

(Last summer I bought a woman her lunch with the help of the waitress, and without letting her know who I was.  I left before she finished. The next time I went to this same watering hole the waitress and I had moment, both of us feeling flush with excitement because it had worked a sort of magic because it seemed like it really gave that person a real surprise and it really was fun. Sometimes I think of Oprah and all that stuff she’s always giving away and Lord, she must be high as a kite, everyday.)

 Smile at a stranger, if they don’t smile back, that is okay.

Smell the air outside.  If it stinks, go someplace else and try again.  Seek out good air and smell it.

 Drive a little tiny bit slower.

Enjoy your favorite fast-food, comfort food, soul food in my honor. Savor every delicious bite and make it a totally guilt free, passion filled event and, hopefully, one you can afford financially- if not necessarily at the scales. Make sure you’re hungry so you can do the satisfied, shoulder turning head bopping “this is sooo, damn good” happy good-food dance while you’re eating. You know the meal I’m taking about. Think of me.  Do some smiling.  Giggle if you can. Then, within 7 to 10 days, buy yourself a broccoli floret, preferably organic. Steam it, sauté it, saturate it cheese if you must but cook it and eat it and smile too if you can.

Notice your breathing. Are you breathing? Excellent. How are you breathing? Shallow and fast? Shallow and slow? Deep and slow? Deep and wide? Are you gulping your breath? When you breathe, does your belly stick out, chest stick out, butt stick out? Just every once in awhile, since you asked how you can help, it would help me if you’d quietly notice your own breathing.

 Say a little prayer. I heard it said, on Inside the Actors Studio by Sir Anthony Hopkins, that when he asked a trusted priest what the shortest prayer in the world is the priest replied, “fuck it” so I use that sometimes, in my head…as a prayer thought, not as a mean thought. I also like these prayers in a pinch “help” and, especially “thanks.”  So, for my sake- there are no specific religious beliefs required here, it’s just the thought that counts.

 Thanks to everyone (and there were a lot of you) who have, and do ask, “How can I help?” I know this list is not a conventional reply to the call but I do think that you trying to do any one of these little things, if you’re feeling like you need to help, really will help, sort of the same way they talk about what effect a butterfly’s wings has on the world, or something like that.

If you just can’t stand it though, call mom and she’ll put you on dog poop duty instead or suggest that you donate blood because people going through bone marrow transplants can sometimes require a lot of transfusion.  Myself, I hope not so many.

2/28/07  Two days before transplant.  A few days after harvesting her eggs. Five years after diagnosis of stage four CLL.