Appreciative for Worldwide Support - From Nancy

Eric here, with Nancy at Rose Medical Center. "What would you like to say on the website, Mom?"

"I would like to say how much I appreciate all the support. I am still dealing with bowel obstructions but looking forward to going home later this week. I am particularly impressed with the kind thoughts and eloquent words from so many people, including an amazing range from Maoris to Sundancers to Choirs to Hindu and Buddhist healers."

Ariel and Brian are visiting for the first time. For a while, Brian sat bedside and held his grandmother's hand. The Tigger stuffed animal Brian gave "Mahgoosh" today (the nickname Ariel gave Nancy, when Ariel was 3) was drawn by Ariel the Artist, and this drawing joined dozens of cards posted on the bulletin board in Nancy's room.

Based on what the surgeon has told her in the last few days, Nancy now has a list. Spend time with the grandchildren, as well as family and friends; write her autobiography; catch up on the photo albums; finish the miniature stable from here childhood that she has brought back to life and shared with her grandchildren. For the life story, a new Olympus mini digital recorder is set up and standing by -- 24 hours of recording are available, as a start. When Nancy is home, she will make a list of topics and then record her stories, and we will send this off to be transcribed. Then Nancy will have an editing expedition to embark on.

The idea just came to the group here to post what Nancy wrote and sent to her alma mater, Pomona College, in preparation for 50th reunion in April 2009. This was sent just before her 71st birthday, the weekend before the surgery that found the cancer. It was supposed to be 300 words. Here is that version:

I feel that since Pomona I’ve followed my bliss to some amazing places, geographically and figuratively. The journey began with my marrying Bill Doub (’57) in Germany the summer of 1959, and from there with him to Palo Alto, Taipei, Seattle, Kyoto, and Williamsburg, finally settling in Boulder, Colorado, for thirty-eight years, except for one year back in Kyoto and the last ten years living half of each year near Grass Valley, California.

Our lives together have been rich and fulfilling, and exceptionally blessed with two caring and enterprising children and their spouses and three grandchildren, all of whom are still very much part of our lives. As a family we’ve been united in working for social justice and environmental causes, and I’m proud to have risked jail by standing up to be counted in opposition to the Vietnam and Iraq wars and the production and use of nuclear weapons. Mostly, however, I have not been particularly active politically, except for the twelve years Bill and I edited and published the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, an international radical scholarly journal that enabled us, we felt, to speak truth to power about issues often ignored or misrepresented in the mainstream media.

Even though until he retired Bill’s career determined where we lived, I have generally managed to pursue my own priorities wherever we’ve been. Throughout I’ve taken particular pleasure in working with children and creating things, but otherwise I have tended to follow my interests serially, with great absorption and passion and then moving on. In Japan it was flower arranging, Japanese gardens, and the traditional Japanese aesthetic, while in Boulder it was a revival of childhood enthusiasms for tennis and riding horses, even earning local and regional rankings in both tennis and showing hunter-jumpers. Now at our home near Grass Valley we are living completely off the grid surrounded by more than thirty-five acres of forest and focusing on growing our own fruit and vegetables and thinning the forest to make it healthier and less vulnerable to fire.

My only regret is that with my many other interests and intense way of doing things I have never felt able to be the elementary school teacher I had planned to be. However, I did earn my teaching credential and worked with children in various capacities for many, many years – as an English conversation teacher in a Japanese high school, child care worker, tennis teacher, Girl Scout leader, and teaching assistant. Overall it’s been a good life, and I’m happy where following my bliss has led me.