A passion for ducks

One of the comforts of the early days was the reassurance that, if it hurt, it probably wasn't cancer.
What a relief. Until the other shoe fell and the doctor added, "Unless it's very far advanced." There are some kinds of pain that can be softened by opiates, and there are some that require stronger medicine.
In the past year and a half, I have read many books about cancer. Only a few have been courageous enough to really address the pain that results in a collision between serious illness and expectation. Recently I read a magazine article in which a German oncologist summed it up in saying that in order to heal (and I don't think he was necessarily referring only to getting rid of disease, but to many levels of healing), one must have a passion for something, a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning.
I am not alone in suffering the pain that strikes when called upon to claim a reason to keep living when faced with physical discomfort, the loss of lovely delusions like "the future," the indignities of the health care system and the isolation of disability.
If it hurts, it's probably life.
There is a cult of heroism surrounding cancer. How often do you hear of the person who claims that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them? Or the woman who climbed Mt. Everest or trained for a triathalone while still recovering from chemotherapy? Are there many diseases from which the sick are expected to rise from their beds to perform wonders? For whose benefit?
I've had plenty of time to think about what might be my crowning moment, my act of cancer heroism. Will I be allowed to die if I swim the English Channel? How about a pilgrimage across Spain? Yesterday I caught myself thinking about going to med school. It's not too late to realize my childhood dream of being just like Carol Burnett, is it?
One of the most common questions I'm asked, besides, "How are you feeling?" is "What are you doing with yourself?" followed by such prompts as "Are you writing? Traveling?"
I'm training for the Tour de France.
I'm writing a novel that you will never find in a used book store because people will be so blown away by its brilliance that they will keep it forever. Pass it on to their descendents. Teach it in the university.
Not really.
I have a passion. Well, maybe more than one. I've never been so good at settling on just one thing to be thrilled about. And now -with all the time on my hands left over from medical tests, dr's appointments, british detective series, telephone calls, visits to the toilet, novels I've always wanted to read, cleaning my closet, reassuring my mother, eating, googling med schools and writing for my small and beloved audience -I now have time to focus on being fickle.
These days my passion is ducks.
Ocean ducks.
Surf scoters. The ones with the funny bills, all the better for sucking limpets off rocks and sifting tiny mollusks from the sandy water of crashing waves. The orginators of a technique practiced by surfers who've found themselves facing towering waves coming in the wrong direction, known as the "duck dive."
Check it out, if you haven't had time to get down to the ocean lately. The surf scoters are here in numbers, as are big sand churning waves. They go together. Surf scoters tend to loiter off shore in large groups and then to come in closer in smaller groups. At the end of my street here on the Westside, there's a threesome that have taken on the wild surf at Fingerbowl. Where the waves are crashing into each other before smashing into rocks, surf scoters hang out like a gang of pre-teen body surfers. Only with funnier faces.
According to the Natural History of Waterfowl website, because of its glorious and massive orange, yellow, black, and white "Roman" nose, the surf scoter has also been known as Goggle-nose, Horse-head Coot, Plaster-bill, Snuff-taker, Blossom-billed Coot, Bottle-nosed Diver and my favorite: Skunk-headed Coot.
Why do I believe that the surf scoter may cure me of cancer just as surely as, say, broccoli sprouts? Or a jaunt up to the summit of Mt. Rainier?
Because when I stand on the rocks, close enough to feel the spray of the winter waves, I am a surf scoter. It's like when I watch boogie boarders in the winter swell. It's like when I watch a dance performance. It must be like what some people feel when they watch pornography.
I am in the waves with my powerful webbed feet. I rise with the incoming wave and just as it breaks, I dive down into the spinning world below. The force of the universe wraps my hollow bones tighter than love, combs my black feathers into a tight curl and lifts me up into the air with my wide circus smile full of mussels, limpets, snails and sand. And I go back for more. More.
More.
And I look just like a middle-aged woman, hanging out at the ocean, doing nothing remarkable.
Feeling no pain.