CHAPTER 1
My First Adventure with Hilda
(a.k.a., Meeting Hilda for the Very First Time, "Daze" I'll Never Forget)
It was a beautiful morning in May when Hilda made her official entrance into our lives. Maggie and I were driving to my Wednesday, 11:00 a.m. tennis lesson and singing sassy songs at our loudest register when my cell phone rudely interrupted our favorite rendition of our current favorite song. My doctor was the caller, and she asked me to pull my car over to the side of the road. As I did so, my heart pounded as if it could expand enough to burst through the confines of my already constricted body. My clammy hands fused with the phone as I paused to park the car and expel the breath I'd been holding to keep from shaking. That's when she told me that Hilda was with me. We had run test upon test because nothing seemed to add up in any understandable, logical, or statistically accurate manner. She reiterated that these characteristics were typical of Hilda and her eccentrically individual style. She referred me to a specialist who knew everything about elephants and set up a time for me to meet with him the next day.
I politely thanked her for the news and then shared that time prompted me to end our call so I would not be late for my tennis lesson.
At this point she exclaimed, "No way can you play tennis. You're too anemic." At that point, Maggie patted my back comfortingly, and I started (sort of) to get the reality of Hilda.
Numbly and with a ghostlike demeanor, I drove Maggie and myself to the tennis club to cancel my lesson. Maggie gently stroked my arm and continued to pat my back the entire ride. From the rearview mirrors, Hilda perched on my car's trunk, waving her wrinkly trunk. She made her first indentation in the body of my car, and I knew it wouldn't be the last. I did not want to deal with her, so I decided to ignore my mirrors and keep my focus on driving forward. Maybe, just maybe, she'd fall off like a bad dream. I was going to keep on keeping on, forward movement, eyes on the road.
Hilda was not a young elephant. She was rather advanced in age, size, and attitude when she moved in with me. The elephant specialist to whom my doctor referred me told me that Hilda and I had the potential to coexist for a very long time with proper treatment, and because I was younger than most of her owners, I could expect new advances in elephant care in my lifetime. There was also the possibility of a transplant down the road, a fun activity where a family member or a stranger who wanted to be family would bring an elephant truck to give me a lift that would empower the elephant to mobilize and disappear.
So many ideas, choices, and questions. At this point, I didn't fully embrace the elephant as Hilda. Initially, I felt totally over, under, and beyond whelmed. Maggie reminded me to slow down enough to breathe, listen, feel, and pray.
You know, this Hilda character, what I imagined in my tongue-in-cheek/foot-in-mouth experience as an elephant, really emanated from a health imbalance well before any cancer diagnosis. Diagnosing an imbalance as dis-ease (a state of being not in-ease) made me think I had done something wrong to have manifested this state of not right. Specifically, when I received a diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, I couldn't accept or believe that I would take on the exact elephant my maternal grandfather's death certificate listed as cause of death. I assumed my elephant was a huge mistake, a misdiagnosis, a fallacious labeling. I was not an old man or a farmer like my grandfather, and this particular elephant wasn't overly evidenced to run in families. The Western medicine textbooks didn't consider me a likely or attractive candidate for Hilda.
I wondered, Why God? In my search for answers, the questions became learning experiences, creating adventures I could never have imagined before the gift of CLL/Hilda, and the amazing times we shared before I sent her away, like Mary Poppins on her umbrella in the wind. Like Mary Poppins, Hilda transformed my life through grace, gratitude, love, miracles, and an infinite number of "spoonfuls of sugar."
Reflections on First Daze with Hilda
There are all different kinds of animals/imbalances/dis-eases that may move in with us in the course of our lifetimes. How we treat them and ourselves when they're with us determines whether our times together are blessings or burdens, painful or joyful, healing or toxic. The more we learn about our pets/monsters/visitors, the more we get to know ourselves, our courage, our strengths, and our possibilities.
Hilda was my CLL adventure. Woodpeckers may bring with them symptoms suggestive of chronic migraines, or a possum may represent temporary paralysis. These "animals" may come to visit or take residence temporarily or for a very long while. Some of these animals manifest physically like Hilda, and others are invisible to the world, sometimes even to ourselves; revealing who they are and where they're hiding only when we're ready to fully see them. Only when we persist in uncovering what veils our eyes are we able to accept everything ... no matter what. First things first. We get to see to believe so that we learn to lean into embracing possibility (believing without first needing to see).
How I choose to treat myself and the animals I'm aware of are the discovery adventures. How I respond to the introduction of an elephant or a smelly camel, and how I then adjust to coexistence with my animals, determine my reality and the possibility I can create what serves, loves, and glorifies the highest good for all creation.
I am empowered to witness, accept, and adjust to all animals in my life — if I so choose. None of them are bad, wrong, or to be feared unless I imagine them that way. All experience can be neutral, a gift, and another opportunity to blow apart boxes and labels and make miracles of every kind.
All the animals I've ever lived with have just wanted to be accepted — kind of like people do. I want to accept myself and have others accept me, too. Even more than that, I'd love to love unconditionally and experience that same love from others. The first step in that ardent aspiration is to learn about love. That's where the animals bring me the greatest ability to grow and learn. Love is ever present and all pervading. Every single thing I experience helps me learn more about that love I yearn for so intensely.
Many of the animals in my life depart as soon as I become aware of them and...
