December 13, 2011

Attending the White House holiday party outdid seeing the Beatles live at the Garden in 1964...(sorry Dad). The building was brimming with yards of holly, fragrant white lilies spilling from vases, shining silver platters of potato latkes (for Chanukah) and soaring Christmas trees decorated with sparkling golden ribbon and children's artwork. As David, Bob, Esta and I walked up the driveway and entered through the North Portico, we walked through a glassed walkway that gave us glimpses of Jacqueline Kennedy's Garden. After checking our coats, we made our way up the stairway to the Grand Foyer where we were greeted by white gloved cadets offering us flutes of champagne as the Marine Band played a medley from the Nutcracker Suite. There were around 500 guests but we were allowed to wander freely among the rooms on the state floor, so it honestly did not feel busy. We could admire Lady Bird Johnson's portrait, sample maple candy in the East Room, admire the view of the Washington Monument through the Green Room windows and peer at a painting of Harry Truman gracing a stairway winding up to the family quarters on the second floor. The First Lady wore a bright green gown with shoes dyed to match. The President greeted me with a kiss and a hug. "We're from Boston..." I said. He answered "I know you are...you make me almost want to be a Celtics fan." Later my husband and I savored our visit with a moment in the Presidential Library, sitting on a plush red velvet sofa while perusing Dwight Eisenhower's collection of books.

Big Birthday

Candlelight, purple peonies
Crystal goblets, antique plates
Pinot noir or chardonnay.
Party hats, blowers, clapping
Miriam shaking a tambourine
Simon and Asher strumming,
Hal laughing in his high chair
Charli hunting for crumbs
Burgers, fries, cut up carrots
Chèvre, beets, halibut, greens
Vanilla cake with raspberry sauce.
Fourteen family members
Celebrating at one long table.

Thinking Back

The call came early on a June Wednesday, one of those mornings when the sunshine beams through the slats in our window shades. We were both still in bed. I could hear the modulation in David's voice, the note of surprise as he rose from between the sheets to continue the conversation in the hallway. Perhaps this made the dialogue more businesslike. After knowing one another for forty-three years, he certainly wasn't hiding this news from me. The cells were malignant but slow growing yet they had a lot of volume.

As a precaution, he had had the prostate biopsy eight days earlier. He insisted on driving himself to and from this uncomfortable test and had not given it a second thought. Even though his PSA (prostate specific antigen) level in his blood was elevated, he had no other symptoms. I don't know why I had a sense of foreboding.

We showered, made coffee and readied ourselves for the day. David went to his office while I took Miriam to music class. Gratefully I focused my attention on dancing and singing with my granddaughter. I pushed her in her stroller back to my house. I could hear Jess and her boys tossing a ball in the yard. As she unlatched the gate to greet us, I couldn't hide what I knew. "Dad, cancer?" Now it was out as it should have been. David and I talked with our other children and made an appointment with his urologist to start to figure out what this all meant.

Setting up homes and raising children, we have always been a good team. I bought myself a small black notebook that could fit easily inside my purse. David and I clicked into overdrive as we met with surgeons, medical oncologists and radiation oncologists. Carefully I jotted down notes at each meeting. We became well informed about the disease and its various treatment options. Our sources were doctors, their articles in medical journals and one book in particular written by a world-renowned specialist. The details of David's case pointed toward surgery done in the traditional "open" way as opposed to the newer robotic method.

It's hard to be private about your life when your face is strained from the long hours spent driving your husband to consultations, body scans and MRI's. Slowly it became easier for us to limit our social contact to a short list of people who wouldn't mention the prostate information they had gleaned from the internet or clamor to tell us about their second cousin once removed who was convinced that radiation was the best and the least risky choice.

I poured my nervous energy into ironing my husband's linen shirts, a simple task that yielded concrete results. Cooking nutritious meals consumed me. I believed that his body would recover better if he ate roasted organic chicken stuffed with quartered apples and herbs snipped from our garden or seared halibut resting on a bed of greens with sautéed sweet onions, yellow peppers and sliced radishes. We cuddled, never asking ourselves "Why us?" We felt lucky that he had a form of cancer that could be managed.

As the surgery date approached, in the middle of the night I began to pace the house, my thoughts frozen at the instant when I'd have to kiss my husband and leave him with the anesthesiologist and the surgeon. My children insisted that they would be with me, as did my sister-in-law. They all became my precious on the ground team, fielding cell voice messages and e-mails.

Jess and Aron brought me coffee and pastry, the Danish stuffed with raspberry preserves that I used to devour when they were small and I wasn't counting calories. In the recovery room, we could visit, one by one. After Jason stayed with his dad for a bit, I took another turn. Soon David requested his daughter-in-law, Cecily. "Don't I have another daughter here?" He wondered. A nurse looked at me and said, "You have many blessings."

August 7th

Your response has been overwhelming. Our family felt the power of your support on July 28th. Now we are receiving books, flowers, fruit, ice cream sundaes and delicious meals. Thank you. Our world will never look the same. We are grateful that you are part of it.

July 15th

When tough times happen, we are touched by the people who come forward to offer help, prayers and positive energy. For those of you who facilitated doctors’ appointments, consultations, cooked in our kitchen, brought cookies and muffins, left messages, sent notes and offered their company, we love you all.

Surgery is later in July followed by weeks of recovery, but we are hopeful. We will get beyond this and celebrate more anniversaries, ride our tandem, drink Stoli blue and tonic up at the lookout, take long walks on the Quansoo sand and enjoy our children and grandchildren as well as our extended family and dear friends.

So light a candle, think good thoughts and hug the one you’re with.

Londolozi

Londolozi Camp borders Kruger National Park in South Africa. Londolozi comes from the Zulu word meaning to protect. The Shagaan Tribe has its roots in this area. We visited their village. Lina read an assortment of small animal bones to figure me out. "You are a lady of many surprises.." she said. Lina lives in a rondavel, a thatched hut that stays cool in the heat and is impervious to the rain. The camp's location is referred to as Sabi Sands and is part of the Greater Limpopo Park. In the late afternoon light, I huddled under a wool blanket. We saw our first white rhino and an aging male bull. There were also herds of wildebeest. Somehow I had always thought that wildebeest were fabricated for fairytales, but here they were in the flesh. Guinea fowl hurried along with their long blue necks. We heard the knock knock call of the blacksmith plovers, a chorus of painted reed frogs, the calls of the white-faced ducks and the rustle of marula trees. The earth is a shade of reddish brown that is different from the pale yellow Kalahari sand in Botswana.

The setting of this camp is granite outcroppings with lush green undergrowth. Elephants ambled toward the Sand River for a drink. In the morning we walked with our guide, Byron and a couple from Oklahoma whom we had met. We studied hippo and tortoise tracks, lizards with indigo blue tails called rainbow skinks and colorful lilac-breasted rollers that happen to be the national birds of Botswana. A chameleon was almost completely camouflaged in a fig tree. Later we were driving north, looking for lions. In the chilly air I had on a scarf, a fleece sweatshirt and a vest. Our vehicle crossed the river with the rushing current. We came upon a pride of two lionesses, four cubs and a young male lion who was old enough to go out on his own but must have preferred to stay with this group. I snapped a photo of him looking as though he is smiling for the camera.

We encountered two male leopards facing off with low growls. They each had bite marks and gashes on their faces. Our guide explained that clearly there had been a territorial struggle. Later we were lucky to track a lone male leopard moving stealthily though the brush. He pounced seemingly effortlessly on a tree limb and suspended himself gracefully. On our way back to camp that day, we passed a crash of five rhino and a herd of buffalo wallowing in the mud.

It was magical to be in a place where we could study the web of the golden orb spider, listen to monkeys sounding the alarm that lions were near, touch wild anise, taste biscuits and coffee in the pink glow of the rising sun and speak in hushed tones so as not to disturb the animal life.

Cape Town

At the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Town is a gorgeous city with a tough history. A cable car ride to the summit of Table Mountain enabled us to have a stunning view of the rocky cliffs, the irridescent blue sea and the new stadium built for the World Cup soccer event. Our first stop was Robben Island, a penal colony where over six thousand political prisoners were held between 1963 and 1991. Although Nelson Mandela is its most renowned prisoner, there are many others with stories to tell. The guides at Robben Island are men who were incarcerated during apartheid. Their children under sixteen years of age were not allowed to visit, so many did not see their kids grow up. The prisoners toiled in the blinding sunlight of the limestone quarry under the watchful eyes of their sadistic guards. Our guide thanked the United Nations and all those who did not turn their backs on South Africans, but supported their struggle for freedom. By keeping them in their sights, the world made sure that they were not isolated.

We continued to the District Six Museum where we learned about the destruction of a community and its music and arts. In 1966 during Botha's regime as minister of community development, District Six was declared an area for whites only. Over a period of fifteen years, 60,000 people were uprooted and moved to an area called Cape Flats. Nearby was the Jewish Museum that was built adjacent to the oldest temple in South Africa. We learned about Nadine Gordimer's writing, William Kentridge's art and Helen Suzman's role as a lone white voice in the fight for black African rights. We marveled at the recreation of a shtetl that seemed to have an echo of our grandparents.

The Xhosa Tribe inhabits many of the townships on the outskirts of Cape Town. We viewed acres of tin shacks with outhouses out back. We visited Langa Township where activist Amy Biehl was murdered, Guguletu Township where seven boys were shot in their schoolyard and Khayelitsha Township where we met Vivian Zilo who runs Iliso Care Society. Vivian has a soup kitchen that feeds 300 people one hot meal each day, a sustainable vegetable garden, a day care center that is free for parents out looking for jobs, a youth group that includes a soccer team and encourages youngsters to volunteer in Iliso's programs and five bunks so she can shelter aids orphans. Her home is immaculate as were the children inside. Their faces were full of smiles and their manners were good. Vivian says that her work is a drop in the ocean, but it is visibly important work. The soup kitchen lets Vivian and her staff take the pulse of the community, her home is a safe house and she finds foster homes for the orphans within a few months.

In the morning, we took a boat to Seal Island in Hout Bay where thousands of seals were barking, yelping and waddling in the water. There were so many seals that the rocks they were lounging on looked furry. There are lots of shipwrecks dating from the days of the explorers. We made our way down the coast to The Cape of Good Hope, at the very tip of Africa where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans converge. These were perilous waters for Portuguese explorers Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama in the 1400's. Their discovery was beneficial to Europe as it opened the whole world to the East. We could feel the strong winds and see the clash of the currents. A fabled surfing spot, Dungeons, is close by. We observed African penguins in the Indian Ocean and collected sea glass and anemone.

Our Wineland tour took us to the university town of Stellenbosch as well as the Franschhoek and Paarl regions. Here the gold and orange tinges of early fall were evident against the jagged peak backdrop. Some wineries have thatched roofs on their manor houses that hearken back to their Dutch heritage. We particularly liked Meerlust's 2003 Pinot Noir and our lunch at La Ferme in Franschhoek Village. In the evenings, we looked forward to meandering around Victoria Wharf in Cape Town, a city that gave us some sobering context for our trip.

Zarafa Camp

The setting of Zarafa Camp overlooks the Zibadianja Lagoon in the Selinda Reserve near Chobe Camp in northern Botswana. We slept in a canvas zippered tent under mosquito netting but our tent had a wooden floor fashioned from old railway timbers, leather furniture, a decanter of sherry and a copper bathtub. During the night, we could hear a hyaena snarling and an elephant hooting. In the morning, we discovered that the hyaena had attacked a baby elephant. Later we came upon the agitated mother thrashing in the water while she tried to clean her bloody baby with its chewed tail and ears. Our guide assured me that the little elephant would survive and these altercations are part of the cycle of the jungle.

We sipped coffee around the fire and scooped porridge from a pot resting above the coals. As we got ready for our daybreak drive, the flaming orb of the sun began to burn off the morning mist. We saw groups of impala leaping. Their hind quarters go up as they leap. While the baboons jumped around with them, the scene evoked a field day from elementary school. We tracked a leopard for almost an hour. She must have been very hungry to be looking for food so actively in the daylight. Leopards are usually solitary and secretive animals that can be difficult to find. At noon we enjoyed a surprise lunch on a riverboat. We tasted vegetable pie, grilled beef kabobs with homemade chutney, a tossed green salad with artichokes, sunflower seeds and tomato, and sliced papaya with prickly pear. An elephant peered at us through the reeds while a waterbuck couple waited nearby.

In the afternoon, we drank red roobuis tea and munched on mango cake and passion fruit. The air in the bush has a particularly pleasing scent as the sun goes down: a blend of wild basil and sage and amber grass. On a sunset drive, we listened to the symphony of bell frogs while we watched hippos leaving the water and creating walkways through the thick under brush. The new moon was a sliver of silver. A lioness suckled her three cubs. We saw an owl gyrating on a tree branch, sparkling fireflies and the eyes of the impala glistening.

When one shakes hands in Botswana, the custom is to hold the opposite hand on the shaking forearm. This motion conveys extra warmth. The management team at Zarafa were an African husband and wife, Alex and Onay. Together with Stephen, our guide, they welcomed us into their home and shared their sense of fun. They were excited to point out a pelican looking for fish, a dwarf mongoose scuttling, baboons scavenging and a leopard lurking. During our last dinner when the whole staff performed for us, they sang and danced with feeling.

On Safari

We flew over Botswana's legendary Okavango Delta in a six-seater plane. Below us was a verdant flood plain covered with blankets of bright green duckweed. We caught glimpses of stately giraffes and lumbering elephants. After landing on Mombo Camp's sandy airstrip within the Moremi Game Reserve, we climbed inside a waiting Land Rover. The air was pungent with the scent of wild sage. We heard the calls of African cuckoos and the snorts of a female impala herd. Was there a leopard slinking around in the brush? The snort is the alarm call as impala are low on the food chain. We passed a family of warthogs strutting with their self-important stride. They almost look like women wearing high heels.

At the camp, we sipped ginger tea while we learned about the daily schedule. Our wake up knock would be at 5:30 a.m. so we could be out of our tent by 6:00 a.m. to view the emerging sun, hear an elderly male lion calling for his pride and watch as the early morning mist evaporated in the distance while a pod of hippo bathed in a pond. A baobab tree can be as much as three thousand years old. Acacias are also prevalent. Giraffes enjoy munching on the greens. Their long eyelashes protect their eyes as their thick tongues grab breakfast in between the thorns. Their necks are so long and their hearts are so large that they never totally lie down with their heads on the ground.

A group of zebra is called a dazzle and they are dazzling. Their stripes shimmer in the rosy morning glow. No two zebras have identical stripes, but a baby zebra can always pick out his mother. Wondering if he will lead us to his pride, we stalk a male lion. He wanders along with a powerful gait but the sun starts to bake the earth. Seeking shade, he retreats inside a bush that is like a cave. We move on to a wild dog frolicking with two jackals and a male kudu with giant antlers.

After a few hours of driving around, I wondered if we could stretch our legs and walk. We ambled single file behind our guide who led us with a loaded rifle. He claimed that he had never used his gun, but liked to have it just in case. The animals are not interested in humans unless they are startled or provoked. We could touch the thick mud of an abandoned termite mound, pick up a porcupine quill and collect kingfisher feathers. Standing near a giraffe, we realized just how small we are in the world.

Glimpses of Dad to Share

Dad has always been the family photographer, but I have a snapshot in my mind of Dad, sitting in his comfortable chair in front of the TV in his bedroom, watching “Rawhide” “Bonanza” or “Gunsmoke”…wearing his flannel pajamas and viyella bathrobe while wrapped in a blanket, and going through the list of calls to his patients…reminding each one of them to “Go home and soak it!”

Another snapshot of Dad: driving. I must have been a toddler when he pushed me up through the sunroof in his VW bug while we were stuck in the Callahan Tunnel. He needed to know why traffic was jammed up ahead when he was trying to get to Logan Airport. His speeding exploits were legendary. Each time he was pulled over, he would jump out of his car and exclaim: “Officer, what seems to be the problem? I’m Dr. Banks, on my way to an emergency!”

Dad always insisted: “I’m always right behind you!” This was sometimes a terrifying idea, but mostly very comforting to know I always had your support. When I marched on Washington in May of 1970 after the invasion of Cambodia, it was a bit of a pain to have to call my dad regularly from phone booths…those were the days before cell phones. But I also remember times like when Jay had his tib/fib injury and you hired a car to visit him in Williamstown or the first time I broke my ankle and there you were at Stratton to check out the x-rays and make sure it was set properly.

I know you panicked when I had lunch at your mother’s apartment while I was pregnant with Aron…but maybe I just have a stronger stomach.

Happy Birthday with love, Dad…you are the greatest.

Tribute for March 2nd

It is easy to reflect on the many times my dad has given up a leisure Sunday to dash to the hospital to tend to an ailing patient or to drive around town checking on friends or relatives confined to bed. He has always made himself available to reassure, diagnose or offer advice.

When I was small, I took for granted the fact that I had a father who was revered by the outside world. Dad never talked much about himself or bragged about the latest celebrity flying across the ocean for a consultation with him. What he has termed “practicing the art of medicine” has always been of primary importance to him, and a key value to teach to the many Tufts medical students who have voted him their favorite teacher.

It was very fitting that my father was drawn to the Floating Hospital for Children. Twenty-seven years ago, I witnessed first hand the compassionate care of their staff. My husband, David and I brought our sick infant son, Jason to the Floating. A team of doctors led by Dr. Sidney Gellis used CAT scan equipment, which was cutting edge at the time, to find the infected bone inside our baby’s head. The doctors performed delicate surgery to drain the infection and kept him in the hospital on IV antibiotics for weeks.

During that time, my family received caring attention from interns, nurses, medical students and experienced physicians. It was a degree of kindness and expertise that we will never forget. We are so pleased to be able to honor our Dad and Papa as well as a very fine medical center.