Kate Gray

Writer & Writing Coach

My sister’s recovery and the long flat, June 6

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Forgive me for posting the same thing to two blogs, but this post has lots to do with biking. The references to rowing are due to my years of competitive rowing and my sister’s family’s continued involvement in the sport. Her husband’s name is John, and her son, Ben, is 6’6,” thus the reference to his large hands.

Hi, my little potato bug,

Tomorrow you leave Spaulding, and despite Corinne’s beautiful smile and Brooke’s cajoling and Anne’s insistence on one more step or lunge or arm curl, you won’t look back. That’s the point, of course. I’m including a photo from the window you’ve had for the last 8 weeks.


Recently a neighbor who’s started biking asked how to improve her speed on the flat. I’m no expert; I’ve been riding for only 8 years or so. But on rides of 3-8 hours, you think about technique, especially when you run out of other thoughts.

And riding is surprisingly like rowing: technique matters. When you’re riding hard and well, the strokes feel light. The stroke should be quite different than the recovery. (Funny what context does for words like stroke and recovery…) In biking, the rpm is higher than in rowing (80+ rpm ideally), and therefore, more difficult to analyze. Near the top of the revolution is the time to push, before the top, and then, relax for a split second, and pull around the bottom of the revolution, relax, push, relax, pull… It’s important not to work all the time, to utilize big muscle groups like both quads and hams, and most of all, look up. Last weekend along the Columbia River, heron and osprey and kestrels and seagulls laughed at me. As usual.

Ten days ago at Spaulding you were doing things you couldn’t have done when I saw you the last time: walking without mechanical devices, feeding yourself, spotting someone approaching you from the left side. Ten days ago you walked along the Charles, cut your food with your fork in your left hand, zipped up your jacket, and did lunges. Lunges. One foot out. Balance. Lower your weight. Balance. Back foot forward. Breathe. Other foot out. Balance. Lower. Step. Your ballet training kicking in.

You are making such fast progress it may be hard for you to analyze what you’re doing. You are pushing the pedals at just the right places and propelling yourself forward. Those of us lucky enough to see you can tell you that you are blazing fast, that your technique is perfect, that Lance Armstrong is your peer.

And the next few weeks will be the flat. It may be a long route, but you have more determination and more drive than anyone I’ve seen. Quick and light strokes are good for biking. For you, I imagine the trick is the repetition, the unconscious movements like picking up that fork, and the looking up, seeing John walking toward you, or feeling the playful touch of Ben’s enormous hand making your hand look like a child’s. Those will be your osprey, not laughing at you, but cheering you on, encouraging you on the flat. I’m cheering you, too, from just a little farther away.

You go, girl.
-Kate

tears downhill, May 23

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(Here’s a piece of a letter to my sister, Kim, posted on Letters to Kim. I’m using it here because there’s biking in it.)

Cousin Pam wrote to tell me to ask if little whimpers of pain were escaping my heart from Aunt Priscilla’s death (she’s quite a writer), and I said, yes, and some pains are paper cuts, somewhere between a whimper and a gut punch. For instance, last weekend at our cabin in Mosier, Oregon, when walking my dog early in the morning, I heard a sound I’d never heard before, getting louder coming toward me. It was a short burst, a lung-full, high, scared. Then, I saw deer bunch up when they saw me and were more afraid of me than they were of the thing chasing them. That sound. Just sometimes when I’m not sure where to go.
To Pam I tried to articulate the tears that sprang into my eyes on a steep downhill on the path at the end of my 45-mile ride (3,200 ft elevation), the same path we all walked last summer when all the siblings came out here. I don’t usually cry on downhills (sometimes uphills…), but the cold in the eyes was a good cover for the mix of emotions. The way you sidle up to each of your siblings (and possibly son and husband) and those long, piano-fingers become pinching machines has trained us to love your closeness and laugh/cringe at what you deliver. We spent that walk weaving in and out of each other, all of us sibs.
And the tears were for missing you and for the joy of getting to see you this weekend and for the joy of your seeing that garden that Penny and others have prepared and the tender way that John will hug you into the car and out of the car and into the wheelchair and through your garden and to your new spot. It’s all magic, a mix of strength and mischief and undeniable love.
See you this weekend, my sweet.
-Kate

new news

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Yesterday, we discovered the real cause of my sister’s brain bleed. It wasn’t a stroke. It wasn’t an aneurism. It was AVM or cerebral arteriovenous malformation. (That’s what the main character, Nate, on Six Feet Under had in case you saw that HBO show.) Now we know. Less than 1% of the population has this condition, and it may be the root cause of what we call “the family aneurism.” It’s congenital. 


The following poem I started writing when my sister Kim was in the worst shape, that first week in Neuro ICU. I tried everything I could to get images out of my body, to find words to deal with the grief that was too huge to contain: wrote in a journal, prayed, wrote a blog, etc. In Boston I had no bicycle; that would have helped. 

            
            Coma
My sister is bulb, paper-shelled, cloven,
six inches under soil, prepped and turned.
My sister is cumulus, extravagant thermals,
wisps lifting eyelids, eyebrows, and lips.
My sister is earthworm, segmented,
soft plow, persistent and slick.
When nurses plunge suction down her breathing tube,
closed eyes cry, and bleating, she is lamb.
When doctors wake her, rake knuckles
across her sternum, she is volcano, shaking.
Like rhododendron after clearcut
Like marram grass on sand
Like bracken ferns after fire
my sister is prayer

How lucky we are that she is no longer in this state. And she remembers nothing. I’m learning how to hold this tremendous gift. 

too much too soon

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Why? That’s what most people would ask: 50 miles, 3,000 feet total elevation. I set new records for slow… Three weeks ago when I did a similar ride I was amazed that my bike could move that slowly and NOT tip over. Yesterday I rode even more slowly.

At the start of the ride, the vista was eastern Oregon, looking out over the desert, The Dalles, the Columbia River in the distance. It was probably 35 degrees, and going down the hairpin turns, no guardrails, was a little like skiing on the edge of the world, ice in the eyes, trusting your weight will take you around the turn. There’s a lot of trust in biking.

I’ve found the best route I can, I think, through The Dalles, and then, the route takes me into wheat. Emerson Loop is a good uphill, through the country, along creeks, muddy and full right now. The trees are budding, yellow against the new wheat.

Always a reward: Mt. Hood in the distance over the old wheat, the lines of hard work, the tractors. Throughout this ride I got to see Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams, all mystery and fiction. Just beautiful.

At this point both the day and I were warming up a bit.

The Dalles is really an amazing little city, with the Dalles dam, and the river, and the two presiding mountains. What a gift this day was.

I almost tanked with no calories left to burn. Stopped at a roadside taco stand, that was fabulous and had lunch. Then, up the hill, 1700 feet in 2.5 miles, oh my! Mt. Hood greeted me around turns.

Triumph!

Letters to Kim

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On March 23, 2012, my sister suffered a massive and devastating stroke. She is slowly waking up from a coma in Massachusetts General Hospital under the watchful care of incredibly dedicated medical folks and my good and loving brother-in-law, John, and nephew, Ben. I spent a week there, 4 nights of which I  stayed in her room in ICU. I wish I could do so much more.

I may start writing letters to my sister in this blog. Here’s the first.

April 4, 2012
Dear Kim,
This morning the air in Portland is cool, nearly white like Pond’s Cold Cream. Remember the blue containers? There was something mesmerizing about gathering the cold on to your fingers in a swirling motion. It felt too light for face cream, too light for something you could see collecting on your fingertips. And the smell was spring but a contrast to the cold in the jar.
One time when I was staying a weekend in the office, where Dad lived when Mom and Dad were freshly divorced, after the fire at our house, I smeared Pond’s Cold Cream on the back of the toilet tank in the bathroom upstairs. It was cold on cold, and maybe that’s what I was trying to do: fit things together that made sense together. When Dad raged and asked me why I did it, I said, “I didn’t know. It felt good.” And those were both true statements. I was so confused when he punished me because, after all, I was telling the truth.
Truth is it’s hard to be here in Portland. Walking around, I’m more cold cream than flesh. This is my second day back, and it’s your day 12. On day 11 you left ICU, which is a really good thing. They were incredibly good with you, and in your single room, you had floor-to-ceiling windows. The light flooded your room, which is a really good thing for your circadian rhythms. The view from Lunder 624 was expansive. The gold dome of the Mass. capitol beamed. The streets of Beacon Hill sped away on a slight diagonal. At sunset I could watch the shadows cast on each floor of buildings on the east side of the streets and then tip up, recede. One of the things you’re missing, which is hard, is the blossoms. The delicate branches were reaching through all those brick buildings. Now that you’re on a new floor, I don’t know what the view is like or what your room sounds like. It’s harder not being able to see and hear and smell where you are.
Here’s what I said to you every morning:
–I love you, Kimmy.
–John and Ben are doing OK.
–John is a rock. When he comes in the room, he says, “Morning, Darlin’,” a little like John Wayne, but softer. He’s taking good care of himself and of you. John comes around 11 every morning and stays to about 6 every evening. He’ll be here soon.
–Ben has Maggie, who clearly loves him. They seem to be a good team. And as you know, Ben and John are an unflappable team. Ben comes for a few hours every day. He’ll be here around lunchtime.
–People are praying for you all over the world.
–Did anyone ever tell you you have beautiful ears? How did you get those ears?
–You have beautiful hands.
–You are the best sister ever.
–I am your favorite.
–You love Obama. Really.
–You’re doing great, and I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but keep fighting, Kim.
–You’re not alone. I’m right here.
The white sky this morning has pink and white blossoms reaching into it. It’s pretty cold here in Portland, about 38 degrees. We’re all ready for warm weather. Maybe next weekend, Easter. You may feel real air today if you get moved to the rehab facility. You love the outdoors, and for the moments you are transported from Mass General to Spaulding, I know you’ll feel the cool Boston air pass over your face, like something refreshing, like something that saturates your skin and feeds you.
I love you, Kimmy.
-Kate

for every writer (with iPads)

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Here’s a cool app that will help you construct the world of historical characters: Video Time Machine. Since the novel I’m writing now is set in two time frames, 1963 and 1951, and since I was 3 in 1963, I need help visualizing clothes, cars, houses, politics. This app allows me to select the year and then the news, sports, advertizing, and more. Wow, it is amazing. Just saying.

Revision

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            Incantation for the Man Outside
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up
and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
~Mark 1:35
There is no silence like the night by the train station
after trains leave, after moonset, after Venus moves
in an arc across the night to a spot blocked by Earth.
There is no silence like the brown bag, crumpled, supple,
drenched, the doorway filled with sack and trash, the way
the viewer’s eye reduces the weather-beaten man to drink.
There is no silence like the one in the tongue
where words wait for tooth and breath and nerve,
where threat floods the brain, knocking thought out.
What silence can there be for him when all sound is threat,
when outside is razor wind, when piss rims the nose, when inside
is forbidden, or inside the mind, a movie plays too loud?
The din stretches dawn to dusk. Pray.
The morning is still very dark. Pray.
Pray, make silence safe.

summit

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It wasn’t easy, but yesterday, in Mosier, I rode the loop from Dry Creek, down State Road to Mosier proper, east on Rt. 30 to The Dalles, right on Chenoweth Loop Road, right on 10th, right up State Road. The last 2.5 miles were 1800 feet up.(In the picture to the left you can see the summit sign.)  I didn’t know my bike could stay upright when I was going so slowly: 3.6 miles an hour, but it did. I did. Slow and steady. No land speed records. Just perseverance.

Saw two sets of hawks dueling it out in the air, aeronautic acrobats, crying and diving.

gifts

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This week at Bud Clark the table was nearly full. We had 7 around the table, the most to date. If laughter were people, the table was crowded. During the first long write, though, there were tears. One woman excused herself, took her journal, and left the room quietly. I followed her into the hall, and asked if she were OK, if I could do anything. She held her journal close, the other hand opening her apartment door down the hall, her sobs coming harder. She shook her head.

But she came back. When she came back, she came over to my side of the table and held her hand out with a little something in it. I extended my hand, and she put a book the size of my palm in my hand: Native American Wisdom. And in it was an inscription to me. Here was someone who has so little giving me something. I stopped the tears of gratitude before they rose up.

And it was the same woman who had a great line about the postcards. We write postcards to each writer after each session with very specific comments about their work that week. The postcards are really fun to write. And this week they mentioned them for the first time. The same woman said, “I wondered when I saw it, ‘who the hell was writing me a postcard?’ and then I realized, ‘so cool!'” She was on a roll.

It was a wonderful, raucous, real session.

beautiful March day

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Today will be session #4 of the group at Bud Clark Commons, and I know enough to expect nothing. I do hope, though, to see the writers from last week, and the week before. Session #3 of any group tends to turn a corner, and last week followed that pattern. Even though there was only one person from the week before. Even though there were only 3 people. It was sweet. We laughed. We were quiet. We talked about silence.

This evening with its 60+ degrees, with the full moon last night, with the daffodils and cherry blossom buds, who knows what stories or writers will emerge.