Lavender

We shall not cease from our exploration

And at the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time
~ T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

I spent most of the other afternoon looking for fresh lavender, only “arrive at a place where I started and know the place for the first time.” Good thing lavender has soothing and relaxing qualities, because the journey was less than entirely peaceful.

Since I feel poor from Spain and since I want to spend all my time baking lately, and since the holidays have arrived, I decided to try to bake gifts for my friends, at least as part of the presents. Some of my closest friends live very far away (proof that closeness of souls does not require closeness of bodies), so I thought biscotti might travel well. This led to a hunt on Cooking Light’s recipe site (which has combined into MyRecipes.com which prints them out in great little 3x5 size if desired) where I found the five star-rated “Biscotti with Lavender and Orange” recipe. Perfect.

This pre-hunt occurred prior to the weekend as I felt the full effect of the 12.5 mg prednisone dose for my lupus-flare-brain-clot headaches—when I bordered on manic energy levels. I spent part of the next few days trying to calm myself down: yoga class, bike rides to the beach, yoga at the beach, soothing Aveeno lavender lotion, “Lavender Diamond” music from Chris, and lots of chamomile tea. I spent another part of those days trying to figure out where I might find fresh lavender for the biscotti which already had a wonderful aroma in the oven of my head. Trader Joe’s and Henry’s are within blocks of here so I checked both places on my way to and from yoga the other day. I found lots of lovely items which created visions of holiday kitchen goodness in my head: pumpkin, organic brown sugar, molasses, spices, eggs, bananas, etc. But no fresh lavender.

Today my continuity clinic was cancelled so I had a last minute gift of an afternoon off. What joy! I had more time to continue my search for fresh lavender, but first, a swim.

The clinic where I work is out east of the city in a rural area, which makes for an enjoyable and unique patient population. And on the way toward home is my favorite indoor pool (I have to stay out of the sun because it makes my lupus flare, too). Though I haven’t been swimming in almost two months, I stopped and managed to feel pretty good through ¾ of a mile. As I washed my hair in the gym showers, I noticed that my shampoo and conditioner are both organic lavender of some sort. I notice a theme here. Lavender was all around me, yet I kept looking for more—the fundamental lavender.

Like the scent of the gray-green leaves I sought, swimming relaxes me well. In the water, I hear no extra sounds. I hear only my breath. In, out, in, out. Some people get fancy underwater headphones to listen to music while they swim. Though I enjoy music, I like to leave it out of the pool. In that time, I breathe. I let my mind go in the space between the pushes off the walls. There also, I often arrive where I started, and experience realizations that seem so simple once uncovered as possibilities.

My mind wandered to earlier in that day, when I had another doctor’s appointment of my own. Finally, I got to see my primary care doctor while feeling good. I usually go to her mid lupus flare, crying and disheartened. Today, I smiled when she walked in the exam room. We talked about my mania with the prednisone; I told her I’d already dropped it back to the ridiculous (but seemingly workable dose) of 11.25 mg which requires me to cut the small 5 mg tabs into quarters. And, even with that, sleeping has become difficult. At night my mind spins off into memories and plans and worries for hours. She offered ambien initially, but I do better with clonapin so we can try that first. It seems silly to me to take medicine to treat the effect of medicine. Even this whole brain clot business started when I started messing with my body’s hormones. I sometimes wonder if my lupus would not have roared so loudly if I’d never taken estrogen. Medicine sometimes knows too little about too much; and too much about too little.

She and I both have concerns about my schedule for the rest of the year. These next few weeks look manageable; however, later in the year I lead teams of interns on the inpatient wards for 2-3 months in a row. That looks like trouble, especially given the fact that I have yet to make it through an entire four week on-call cycle since my hospital stay and diagnosis in May.

While swimming, I discovered that I don’t care how long this training takes anymore. I want to finish. Maybe I can spread out the difficult months. Maybe on the months in between I can work mornings in my continuity clinic and moonlight during evenings, as I have the energy. Because the whole getting paid issue would have to be sorted, but I see options for that. “Moonlight” shifts mean I basically work on a fee for service-ish basis. It remains only to see if the program can accommodate these pool plans.

Once out of the shower at the gym, with my wet lavender scented hair, I wondered if perhaps a different Trader Joes might have lavender. My timing on grocery shopping was perhaps a mistake. The store overflowed with pre-Thanksgiving day shoppers. And the people in the parking lot looked in less than the holiday spirit as I tried to get my car into and out of the tight spot on the corner. I remembered the word, “agoraphobia,” which means fear of the market place literally, but in psychiatry means fear of large crowds of people. I didn’t like the mayhem of the grocery market. I could barely get to the vanilla yogurt. People kept crowding in to get last minute canned pumpkin or sample the apple cider. And I nearly forgot to even look for the lavender. But when I did, no luck there either.

On the way toward home, I texted neighbor, Jane, to see if she knew where I might find fresh lavender. “World Market,” she guessed. I didn’t know where to find that store, so I called Joseph and woke him up from his mid-afternoon nap to find out that I’d already passed the World Market he knew. Since I saw traffic on the other side of the freeway, I didn’t turn around. Lavender, soothing as it may be, might not be worth the travels today. I was still trying to shake the displeasure of my extraction from the parking lot at the grocery store.

I regained peace, though as I drove toward home and the beach, (what’s lost is always found, and what’s found always lost, I find) and with it, regained motivation to find fresh lavender—my holy grail in those moments. Little purple flower chalices of peace and possibility.

And then, epiphany. I wanted fresh lavender. Fresh lavender. Why not look for the actual plant? A live plant with all the benefits of rejuvenation and quiet company built in. Why I had not thought of it before, I do not know. I did know I finally had the right idea, though. I could feel myself getting closer to my goal.

Now, where to find the plant? Lavender grows in abundance at the farm where I grew up. It thrives in the hot Northern California summer; I remember thinning it out yearly, the sweet warm fragrance wafting up from the trimmed branches and purple flowers past their mid-summer prime. It likely grows well here, too, in sunny Southern California. But my studio apartment measures much less than the size of our summer stock pile of home-grown hay we used to feed the horses and launch ourselves onto the barn rope swings. No room for a lavender garden at this stage of my life.

Yet, perhaps I had room for one plant. I remembered as I drove south that the Target where my neighbor Bob now works has a nursery. I could look for lavender there. And also pick up more of the Aveeno lavender lotion and get an orange peel grater so I could return Doug’s to him. Target arranges their merchandise in such a way that I find in nearly impossible not to find something else I cannot live another second without. This trip was no exception. I somehow ended up with more lavender shampoo, in addition to the eggs and bleach I remembered I needed. Still, once I made it to the nursery, it had only tiny Christmas trees everywhere. No fresh lavender.

Out of ideas and getting closer to home, I carefully drove out of the Target parking lot when something to the left caught my eye; a beam of sun shone down on it and climactic opera music started playing in my head. I do not usually feel this excited when spotting Home Depot, but this time was different. I could feel it. This time would not consist of wandering around the isles looking for the perfect nail type or next greatest tool with my Dad. This time I was alone and heading straight for the garden section. This time, lavender beckons. I could see its little purple flowers welcoming me, “You have found us at last,” they whispered, “We are home.” The blossoms keep a home for travelers. And wherever they grow, they create a home. “We are home.”

The garden section has its own entrance and own check-out stands. The poinsettias lined the front and the scent of fir trees greeted me again, but I walked quickly past them. I could see the rosemary and I knew the other garden herbs had to be near. Rounding the corner of the display I saw them, 12 inch lavender plants, on sale. Of course by this time, money hardly seemed to matter. When buying dreams, you don’t look at the price tag first. Beauty, however, did still matter. I wanted a beautiful dream; and the larger plants did not fit my vision of the lavender soaking up the sun outside my door, blessing all comers with its purple peace. I opted for the eight inch healthier-looking “Spanish/French Lavender” variety. There were also smaller ones which would have sufficed quite well for the original biscotti plan, but plans had expanded drastically since sorting through recipes.

By this time, I sought much more than a baking ingredient. I sought the journey. I sought realization that the journey is the peace—the man in front of me chatting slowly with the cashier or the woman sitting on the bag of potting soil with her two year old looking for winter seeds and even the woman shaking her head at me in the parking lot earlier—all shared elements of peace. If I could just open my eyes in the right light, fresh lavender grows all around.

I chose a brown and cream colored glazed pot which accented the sage green and muted purples of the plant. I placed the lavender in it and wrapped my arm around the bundle, carrying it like a child. I realized a couple days later, when I found the receipt, the cashier had accidentally charged me for only the pot and not the plant itself; I must have been too caught up in my lavender dreams to notice. I can try to fix it next time I go back. But, perhaps in the meantime this means what we look for is always already there—and the thing we truly seek we pay for on the road to attainment.

Chopping lavender for the biscotti that night, I chose the branches whose flowers had already begun to dry. I carefully measured the chopped fragrant leaves and grated the best of the fresh orange peel for the 14 hard biscuits I planned to create. I rarely measure quantities as carefully as I did then, but I felt somehow I needed to ensure I did this right. And I did.

With the blessings of the pool-found peace, and the soothing herb, and the struggles and insights about my new disease over the past several months, I did this right. The biscotti turned out beautifully. It has already soothed Joseph when he felt “in a mood” the night it came warm and still slightly soft out of the oven. And Jane came over to share some tonight after another of our neighbors, Sean, drank too much and became angry at the world again; she talked and I crocheted and listened as we left Sean to sort out his own peace. Instead, she and I laughed about her family planning “pickled bean raids” or playing “monster” in her sisters’ darkened Maine house.

The fresh lavender now rests soothingly outside my door; knowing nothing and everything. I kneel down and bury my nose in the blossoms when I get home from a long day of trying to figure out which antibiotics best suit which bacteria growing in my legless veterans at the hospital. “We are home,” the plant whispers to me again. “We are home.”