The earth breathed

My mom died at 2 AM this morning.
The earth breathed, and the heavens moved over a notch.
Fare thee well, Mom.

Friday Harbor Labs.

Sitting on a bus creeping through downtown Seattle on its way to Anacortes, a port on the east side of the Puget Sound. There I will climb aboard a ferry that will take me to one of the most amazing marine labs ever.

I first fell in love with Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories (FHL) in Fall, 1985, a month after defending my Ph.D. thesis at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I had managed to finagle a 1-year FHL postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Richard Strathmann, one of the most creative larval biologists of all time.

My family (daughter, age 9; son, age 6; wife, and I) just rolled into Friday Harbor, and I started coming in every day to do research.

It was unbelievably cool. I became a part of the small family of scientists that work at FHL year round. My job was to do research there, and when summer came around, to organize the weekly seminars. Not a bad job. I was in heaven.

Summer comes to FHL, and there is a steady stream of really interesting, deeply involved scientists. The people I met that year keep popping up in the who’s who of science (is there such a thing?). Many of them have become long-term friends.

But just the place, itself, is magic. The ocean there is just teeming with wildlife. A visit to the tidepools is just enough to blow your mind. Gobs of kelp of myriad different kinds. Huge chitons, big-ass barnacles, limpets of all shapes and flavors. Our friend, David Duggins, was skippering the research vessel, and he would put down a net and bring it up with hundreds of different species. In one trawl. It was like the jewels in the dragons cave. Just grabbing a handful of a net full of marine creatures; creeping and crawling all over the place, was breath-taking.

So here I am about to go to be part of the summer scientist influx (actually I’m part of the “pre-summer” crowd).

I am meeting up with crazy Leonid again. We are returning to our research on slug brains.

Now I’ve just arrived and found my studio apartment. Here’s the view outside my window. Pretty cool, eh? Work starts tomorrow. Tonight I sleep.

The intimacy of care-giving. Dear moments.

I said goodbye to Mom a couple of days ago. My little brother had just arrived to take over the night watches. She barely registered my adieu, which is a good thing, because I would have melted if she had fussed. I had told her repeatedly during the previous nights that we were changing sons and I would be gone for three weeks. This interval pretty much guarantees I won’t see her alive again.

So, four separate watches (around 1 week each) I had, each one with a Mom in a very different state. I will always remember these watches. It was the first time my Mom and I had been so engaged since I was a little boy in her care. The fact that I was taking care of her (rather than she taking care of me) hardly matters. The emotional connection was very strong. The intimacy of these nights was really good for a couple of reasons.

First, the intimacy reminded me that I really do love my mom. You kind of forget this when your life is forging ahead and she is doing just fine in her own life. When an adult child gets together with his parent in normal circumstances it is usually just about exchanging narratives about your lives; her Alaska trip; my research trip to Catalina.

But now, there we were, Mom and I, many nights in a row. Physically engaged in a common project; the task of taking care of her immediate needs. There were some really cool moments during this project.

One thing I really liked was how she responded to being uncomfortable (e.g., a new pain, or getting tangled up in the bed-sheets). “Oh gosh,” she says. Nothing more. Just, “Oh, gosh.”

I mean, I would be saying “Goddamnit, I’m stuck again. Or “Shit I can’t move my foot.” But Mom always says simply, “Oh gosh.” It really sounds like what she might have said as a 7-year old. It sounds like something my granddaughter would say.

Another cool moment happened on my fourth watch (ending two days ago).

Mom was going through many long periods without saying anything. Now and then, I would ask her if she wanted to sip some water or “liquid food” through a straw. “No thanks.” Or, “Yes that would be nice.” But mostly she was very quiet. Sometimes, perhaps much of the time, this was because she was checked out, maybe perusing what was coming, maybe simply sleeping. But the quiet of my last night with Mom, middle of the night, was broken when she suddenly said,

“That bottle of beer looks really good.”

Bottle of beer?

I put my head next to hers and peered the same direction as she was looking. Perhaps there was something there that looked like a beer bottle. Nope, nothing there.

“Do you see a bottle of beer there, Mom?”

“No, but I’d like to.”

This just completely cracked me up. It was pure Mom.

“Would you like to split a bottle of beer with me, Mom?”

“That’s a great idea, Bill.”

So I poured her a glass of beer from the fridge (this was the only time she drank beer during the entire two months since I came back from Costa Rica).

We toasted each other. Mom used a bendy straw, and sucked her beer right down to the bottom.

“I’m going to miss you, Mom.”

“I’m going to miss you too, dearie.”

Breathing

I hate jogging. All I feel when I run is the pain. What’s the point? And still I do it. I’m on sabbatical and there is a part of me that knows that the exercise rules and habits I adopt now might add decades of quality to my life.

I found a soccer ball while on a beach run a few months ago. Now, I push it ahead of me when I run on the beach. It makes me forget my pain. I kick it as far along the beach as I can (not very far; I played my first real soccer game in my 30’s), and run after it. Sometimes I kick it crooked, and it starts to roll down the beach slope into the ocean. NOooooo. I can’t let it go. This ball is saving my life! I sprint to catch it before the briny does. Almost every time I succeed, but the effort creates such an oxygen debt that I stand there at the seaside, arms akimbo, breathing hard, just trying to catch my breath, softly kicking the ball with my foot straight toward the high-tide line, and walking to where it rolls back down. Over and over I repeat this little kick-and-retrieve exercise till I catch my breath, and then start kicking it down the beach again.

Breathing hard.

Breathing hard is not what it used to be. I used to think, shit, what the hell did I do so wrong that I’m breathing so hard? I really blew it. Whatever I was doing, stop doing it.

But now I realize that breathing hard (short of a coronary) is exactly what you must do, at least once a day to keep from going down hill.

The last few weeks, I’ve been studying my Mom’s breathing. She’s going through bouts of breathing really hard. Not the good kind. This is the breathing hard that lung and liver cancer make you do.

Last week she was tossing and turning in her bed. My older brother describes it as her just wanting to crawl out of her own skin. Kicks off the bedclothes, breathing so hard you think she will burst. Jumps up. I gotta pee. Then she quiets down. Then she gets cold. I put the covers back on her and the cycle starts over again.

But the last few nights, she has taken another ratchet downhill. She is not getting up anymore. She can’t. She’s too weak to stand.

But still I listen to her breathe. Soft, peaceful; followed by labored, heavy, pained breathing. Cycles go on and off. Maybe 5-10 minute interval.

The other day, in spite of my best effort, my poorly kicked soccer ball rolled into the sea. It immediately floated away. I watched for a moment hoping it would come back, but I soon realized that the wind and current and waves were taking my ball farther out.

Somehow, this made me totally desperate. I swam out after this silly ball, soaking my brand new running shoes and shorts, totally ruining the rest of my run. But I saved the ball.

I still have it.

Honored Travelers

These days, I am escorting an honored traveler. I am escorting her as far as I can.

I’ve done this before. Decades ago, two honored travelers came into this world. but they came from the other direction. Through the membrane between death and life they burst, like magicians appearing in a cloud of smoke. Then, they were the honored ones.

First, my daughter; then, my son. They emerged completely helpless, and their mom and I did everything humanly possible to keep them alive and comfortable as they moved away from that membrane.

Now, some 30-plus years later I am escorting another honored traveler, my mother.

She is traveling through that same membrane, but this time in the opposite direction. As before, my job is to perform the nitty-gritty tasks on this side of the membrane. The feeding, the butt-cleaning, the consoling. This nitty-gritty work is strikingly similar to 30 years ago; so is its purpose, which is to keep the transition true for the traveler.

My kids needed that nitty-gritty work to start them down the path of the living. My mom needs it so that she can cleanly, gracefully, make the transition to the dead.

Obviously different, birth and death; but being the escort is striking similar in both cases. Somehow in both cases, there is a strong connection to what it means to be human. This is what we do, we humans. I find a palpable sense in both cases that the nasty thankless work I am doing is bigger than I am. I can’t really explain it. But I’ve been struck by the similarity of these transitions. When things start getting really out of control, you don’t say screw it I’m out of here. You say ok, I am going to do this. That’s all there is to it.

There just aren’t that many activities where that mind-set ascends so clearly. So, yes, the feeding, the cleaning, the changing; everything; is all ridiculously, amazingly, similar. But even more similar is the feeling I have while I’m actually doing these things. I think in both cases I feel a sense of awe to be escorting an honored traveler.

Peer Review

During the last 4 weeks or so, I’ve been (in the background) engaging our “Scientific Peer Review System” in an effort to get some of the research my collaborators and I have been doing out into the literature. In short we are trying to get a paper published.

Peer review is an amazing process. It is frustrating, maddening, enlightening, inspiring all at once. It is the bane of my existence, and it is my only claim to legitimacy. It is the core of science.

Many of my colleagues spend unending hours railing against the anonymous reviewers of a manuscript or grant proposal. If only the reviewers had read the paper! If only they actually knew the literature! If only they weren’t so caught up in the fashion of the day, they could see the work’s brilliance and originality.

I submitted a paper a while ago with my first undergraduate collaborator at Chapman as a first author. She did a great job of learning a new technique, of coming into the lab day after day and running experiment after experiment. She got “significant results”, which means that she found that something is going on. She wrote a first draft. I rewrote it, then she rewrote my rewrite, and back and forth for, well years. The data are good, the experiments “worked”, but the question of what they mean was not really clear. This is the critical question of all science: What do the data mean?

She got into graduate school in Japan, a very gutsy move, and has learned junkloads of new science there. She is fully committed to the science pathway, a commitment that is not for the faint-hearted. The second author is also presently in graduate school, and going great guns. She is also a toughie.

So that kind of toughness breeds reciprocal toughness (from the undergraduate mentor, me). We have to usher this study into the light of day. Into the light of peer review. Bright, startling, hot light. This is really hard. Like a sharp rock.

Because we had presented the data in a variety of scientific meetings, we had a pretty good sense of what the data meant.

Our peer reviewers did not share that sense. The paper is 11 pages of double-spaced text. The critiques we got back from the three reviewers covered 16 pages. All the good and all the bad of the peer-review system is throbbing in those 16 pages.

Science is not for sissies. This kind of a review makes you just want to beam the fuck up. Get me out of here. Give me a real job. Don’t make me look at this paper again. Really? I have to get in there and entertain every one of the 16 pages of small and large criticisms?

Yep. That’s right. That’s what you have to do. Stop whining and get to work.

And now we are almost done with that. Every single critique, large and small is in our 10-page (single-spaced) response letter. The manuscript itself has been reworked, not beyond recognition, but to the point of “wow, that is a shift.”

Revising a manuscript is a little like the rough side of being married. Someone, more or less just like you, doesn’t agree with what you are doing and thinks you should change it. If you don’t respond at all, there will be consequences (you won’t get the damn thing published!). Doing nothing is not an option. So you grab each aggravating, sometimes embarrassing (it isn’t uncommon for a critique to make you realize how little you actually know), comment, and work it. Think about it. Look up articles that deal with it. Write and rewrite.

Then a little magic happens. As you get more familiar with it, you start to see the critique for what it actually is. Not for what the damage it can do you, or for the biased perspective of its perpetrator, but for the strength that it can give your work. To know the way 3 or 4 smart people think about your work is a gift from the gods. It makes it much stronger. You have to preserve its core with love, but these changes are little miracles of science.

So. All that is fine and dandy, but will the paper get published? Stay tuned.

Teamwork

All hands! All hands on deck! Let’s go.

This is the start of a night-time sailboat drill. I write “all hands” cause I know that is the cry of the crew on deck. Yet I have no memory of hearing it from my bed. I’m being pulled out of the deepest sleep into a flurry of coordinated, precision teamwork. I am still sound asleep for the first few moments as I head for the main hatch. Got to take down the spinnaker, quick before the wind tears it to shreds.

But here’s the thing. I’m not in a sailboat race here. I am taking care of my dying mom at night. Her labored breathing on the monitor cues me that she needs help. I am rushing through the door that separates us, not sure what I will find.

Night time is scary and beautiful and tranquil and terrifying. All at once.

Just like a sailboat race, I’m called out of the deepest sleep.

Just like a sailboat race, I don’t exactly know what is going to greet me as I come onto the scene. Is she rising to get out of bed, is she out of bed, did she make it to the commode without me, did she fall on her face in a pool of pee and anguish?

Just like a sailboat race, I will need to integrate myself into a working team (my mom and her addled brain), who may not be doing things the way I would. Ok, let’s get you over to the pottie. Mom, you’ve got to move your feet just a little bit (the pottie is right next to her bed). That’s it. Good. Close enough. Now sit down. Good… she pees… The crisis settles a bit. Everyone knows what to do next. Let’s put on a new set of undies, Mom. Here they are. Mom, you awake? Ok, then, let me get it started. Lift your foot. Step in. I’m going to pull it up a little. Ok. How bout you stand up now. Mom are you awake? Let’s stand up so you can go back to bed. That’s it. I’ve got your nightie, so pull up your panties… that’s it…back toward the bed…put your butt down, Mom… lie back. Bella (the cat), you’re in the way… brush her away... Ok, Mom I’m going to lift your legs onto the bed. There we go. Good. ..pulling on the covers. You OK, Mom?

I look out at the moonlight on the water outside her window. It is perfectly calm out there. Not a ripple on the bay. A beautiful May night.

It makes me consider what I’m doing here. That’s a long story.

Good night, Mom. I love you. Don’t forget to call me when you need to go again.

Just like a sailboat race, this campaign of care; the nightly pattern of peeing and pantie changes; will end.

Just like a sailboat race, I look forward to the end.

Just like a sailboat race, I know I’m going to miss it when it is over.

Unlike a sailboat race, when it is over, my brothers and I are going to quietly let the vessel sink. And step back onto our own vessels, and sail on.

Adrenalin

Adrenalin

Just got back from presenting the lobster attack-in-reserve story to a bunch of evolutionary biologists at UC Santa Cruz.

I was an undergraduate there a million years ago and did a (for me) seminal piece of research under an amazing Marine Biologist, John Pearse, who, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, encouraged me to keep on being a marine biologist. Instead, I sailed with my first wife and big brother and his first wife on their little boat for more than a year.

Anyway, back to my visit to UCSC on Tuesday. Giving a talk is really nerve racking, especially if your data are new, as yet unpublished. Not sure if your story will survive the scrutiny of peer review. Plus, my night work taking care of Mom had depleted most of my concentration stores. But I managed to get it together, in the San Jose Airport actually, where the quiet and high-speed internet are awesome.

I was hosted by one of the coolest scientists on the planet, Jim Estes. This guy studies the ecological effects of cute little furry sea otters. They, like lobsters and sheephead inside the reserve, are what we call keystone predators. They eat urchins, which if unchecked, will eat a kelp forest right down to the bed rock. Add a population of sea otters to an urchin barren, and within a couple of years, viola, a beautiful kelp bed full of big fish and lots of new invertebrates.

The chair of the department at UCSC, Pete Raimondi, and another faculty, Mark Carr have pretty much written the book on marine reserves, so my coming in and telling all these guys that “it’s the behavior, stupid”, was a little unnerving.

Very unnerving actually. Giving a talk is a little like what I imagine rock musicians go through. Lots of adrenaline pumping through your veins. Your are up there naked, vulnerable. The scene in “Blues Brothers” comes to mind; when the band is pelted by beer bottles and anything else the angry mob can get their hands on.

Back to the sail-boat ride with my brother. When it was all over (January, 1975), my first wife and I were kind of shell-shocked. Months on end of idyllic sailing and surfing were over.

“So,” I said, “What do you want to do with the rest of our life?”
“I dunno,” says she. “What do you want to do?”
“Well,” says I, “I think I want to be either a rock musician or a marine biologist.”
To which she answers, “Well your voice isn’t very good.”

That is how I came to be a marine biologist.

But last Wednesday noon I felt the adrenalin surge of a rock musician going to the cyclone-fence bar for a gig.

But the mobs liked it! They asked great questions. Made me think. Made me wish I could be at a graduate University where lots of good scientists are talking about their work all the time. Saw some pretty stressed-out graduate students, though, which reminds me why I like Chapman so much. Everything is a trade-off

Looking to the Side

My Dad taught me how to find a distant light house when at sea on dark nights. “Look” for it to the side of your gaze. Sounds weird, but it works. You can be staring right at a dim light and it isn’t there. Shift your gaze 10 degrees to the left, and pop, there it is.

My mom looks at her needs that way (-my words preceded by dash).

-Mom, do you have any pains?
No, I’m fine.
You know, I’ve kind of been wondering if my liver is stretching or something.
-Does your belly hurt?
No.
Well maybe a little.
-So, on our pain scale (1-2 tolerable, 10 excruciating) how would you rate it?
I don’t know.
-Really, Mom? Cmon, give me a number, so I know what kind of pain medicine to give you.
I told you I don’t know, Bill.
-Ok, is it a 7?
Oh, no.
-Ok, how bout 3?
Well, no, it is more than that.
-Ok. How bout a 5?
No, actually it’s a bit more.
-6?
No, more.
-How bout 7?
No, I already told you it isn’t that high.
-Ok, then it is a 6 ½. I’ll give you some Tylenol with codeine. Is that alright?
That would be fine.

Now, readers, I would ask you to be a little like my mom. Don’t just stare blindly at the fact that she is dying. Look to the side. If you talk to her or visit, make it seem spontaneous. The direct approach just makes everyone uncomfortable, and blinds the flow of information. Looking to the side opens up the channels. You can much better see the depth of things.