I've missed you, Kansas City

Tomorrow is check-up day.  There's nothing like a check-up at a "Sarcoma Institute" to help you relive that terrible day when you were told you had cancer.  That comes with all kinds of scary thoughts. But truthfully, I kind of like to be reminded.  That year was as poignant in its revelations as it was in terror, and the revelations are something I never want to forget.  I'm not terribly fond of the deep scar on my right shoulder either, but I don't notice it without reliving the good moments as well as the bad.

There's a wall of survivors at Dr. R's office with pictures of his patients - all smiley and grateful for him.  I've never remembered to send him one of me, but I'm thinking something like this one - since Jake was such a part of our miracle.  The first time we took Jake to one of my checkups, other patients noticed him so sadly because they were afraid he was the one with the disease.  We were happy to tell them otherwise.  

Other patients there make me sad too.  I always say to Michael, "This is one waiting room in which you really don't want to see even one other person."  Instead, it's usually crowded.  I especially hate it if the patient seems new.  We regulars have a certain confidence and happiness because we've been through the gauntlet and come out all brightened and re-prioritized about our lives.  The new ones are so sad though, because they don't know how it will go for them.  This disease is very unpredictable, so I don't know how it will go for them either.  And I hate it. 

But I didn't start this post to be sad.  Like I said, it doesn't make me sad to be reminded of my cancer.  It makes me something else - it's kind of proud, kind of grateful - but with a painful little edge that hopes I never have to be this proud or grateful again.  Mostly, I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  We don't have the kind of budget that would create bi-yearly trips to Kansas City just for the heck of it.  And I love that drive so much.  I love the uninterrupted time with Michael and the long stretch of Missouri highway that's really only good for two things - conversation and happy thoughts.  So I'm going to revel in it.  On the way down we'll talk about our jobs and our plans and our kids.  I'll be nervous for the last thirty minutes or so before I see Dr. R. and breathe a sigh of relief (he doesn't have to say anything - I swear his presence just emits some sort of emotional Valium), and then we'll eat somewhere cool and on the way home we'll call the moms and the grandmas and then talk about how great life's going to be from here on out.  The whole thing is really much more treat than torture.  It's a wonderful feeling to be followed that closely for signs of recurrence, and an even better feeling when they Don't. Find. ANY.

(P.S.  Thank you, Grandma Jane, for giving the kids something much more fun to do than a drive and a waiting room.  It's really hard to keep Jake out of the rippling fountain next to the sign-in desk.)

Thus ended my prejudice against that warm, brownish thing they call tea

This yummy cup of awesome was my salvation last week when I wasn't feeling well.  Chest congestion is the only thing that can ever induce me to drink hot tea.  Until now.  Now I will drink it for soul congestion as well.  For Mondays and Wednesdays and the cold, dark days of January.  Any time the bills outweigh the booty or I hear too much about the economy - bring on the tea.  Now that I've discovered its powers.  

You know I wasn't feeling well last week, and my mother one day recommended hot tea, as any proper mother should.  I remembered a sense of cozy warmth the last time my chest had hurt like this, so I was for it.  I boiled water in a plain old soup pot.  I had a variety of tea bags around - a gift from Mom at Christmas I think? - and chose spicy chai.  Then I dipped the water from the plain old pot using a plain old ladle, but I poured it over the tea bag into this beautiful pink-budded cup on its matching saucer.  And that, I'm pretty sure, created the magic.

My Australian friend sent me this tea set, because we always said we wished we could have tea together.  It came up because of our mutual love for Anne of Green Gables and the fact that in Australia, they actually have tea.  (Jake and I call it snack).  She sent it, I'm pretty sure, during the cancer year so it holds the added intention of, "If there was anything I could do to ease your pain, I'd do it - and here is a wonderfully sweet tea set for starters."  

The combination of that wonderfully spicy-chaied warmth and the feeling that Bec was actually reaching across the ocean to pat my weary soul (plus the added aspect of having obeyed my mother, which rarely fails me) - all worked together to soothe every corner of my being.  I had no idea a cup of tea could pack so much miracle power in it, but I'll never forget it again.

I'm not all that resolute, so I'll call them New Year's Considerations

Well, it turns out that the Wii isn't quite enough to make me stop wishing that every post could be labeled "Road to Publication", that new years are scarier than they used to be, and yoga is awesome.

The first is self-explanatory.  I'm a teensy bit obsessed, but I no longer care.  You don't get what you want without caring about it very much.  So I'm just going to keep caring.  TTYR.

I adore the New Year holiday.  First of all, because I need a buffer between Christmas and reality.  Christmas is like a fairy tale.  January, especially in Missouri, is cold, hard reality.  The New Year eases me in with an extra day off work, warm happy thoughts, and lots of snacks and stuff.  I like that.  Plus, I totally buy in to all that this-is-our-year! stuff.  Because you never know when it just might be.  But then, this year, after thinking all those rosy, dreamy thoughts, I got scared.  Because I was probably all rosy back in January of 2005 too, and that's the year I had cancer.  Which despite giving me the premise for a book to finally actually finish and a new lease on life and a bigger laugh and stuff, also scared the living daylights out of me.  (I wanted to say crap - that it scared the crap out of me, but I don't really like to jar my mom that much, and she'd be really jarred if I said that on my blog - even though it felt more like crap than daylights - because I don't even know what those are.)  

I have a friend who used to look forward on New Year's Eve and actually pray with her husband and try to find out just what the new year held.  Even pre-cancer I knew I wanted none of that.  I hoped I could face anything that came, but I didn't want to know it ahead of time.  And this year, sure enough, I stopped short when I clinked my sparkling raspberry grape juice cup with the boys (turns out, the raspberry is not better than plain old grape), because I realized how little any of us know what the year might hold.  

Fortunately we don't know the good stuff either, and there might be plenty.  But all the same, I'm afraid I don't look ahead with the same naivety as before.  I think this is what people mean by one day at a time.  

Which brings me to yoga.  I didn't make New Year's resolutions.  I never really do, although I do kind of believe in them.  I mean, hey, if there's something you need to change it's worth a shot.  But I do really hope to be more fit this year, to put a little more effort into my well-being.  And I hope to be more grateful.  Every day.  Yoga helps with both.  I look forward to that hour, because it's energizing and relaxing all at once.  But then, throughout the day, I find myself whooshed to that yoga place now and then just when I was headed to perhaps a more stressful one.  It's very centering and peaceful.  Very serenity now.  I don't know if it's yoga specifically or just activity in general, because I took a walk with the boys today and felt awesome after that as well.  I can't do the walk barefoot, which is something I love about yoga.  But I can't hold Jake's hand during yoga either, which is something I loved about the walk.  

So here's hoping I care enough about my writing career to help it happen but not so much that I obsess, that I can face the year with gratitude for all the good and bravery for the rest, and that I remember what it does for a body - Just.  To.  Move it.

  

sometimes you get what you wish

To add creativity to my thankful list today, I thought I would include actual quotes from my journals.

October 12, 1995

I really want to love and be loved.

There are all kinds of quotes with Michael's actual name in them - clear back from fifth grade when I wrote about the two cute boys in my class and one of them was him.  Oh the drama as I pined for that boy from that moment on.  We went on our first date Valentine's Day 1996, and we were married August of 1997, the hottest day this side of a sauna, I'm told.  To me, it was perfect.

October 5, 1998

I want to have a baby.

It took me a while to come to this one.  Growing up all I really cared about was getting married and being a mom.  But once I got married, I found that I wasn't in a very big hurry for motherhood after all.  I finally started hoping for it about one year before it happened.  John Michael was born October 17, 1999, the happiest day of my life to that point, and Andrew joined us June 13, 2001.  Being the mother of two very young boys was crazy and trying and some days lonely.  Being the mother of them?  Awesome.

April 3, 1999

Our new dream is for me to work at home.

Check.  I've never made much, but I make a little, and I do it without paying childcare.  I really love that moment after dropping John and Drew off at school when I get to pull right back into my own driveway.  Third to being married and being a mom, I wanted a home that I love.  The house has flaws, but the home is wonderful.

Things went a little dark in June of 2005, as most of you know.  I was pregnant but diagnosed with a rare, aggressive tumor.  And then I wished for this.

July 21, 2005

I don't want this.  I want to live.  And I want this baby.  I want to live to see all my babies grow up.  Please let that be my story.  I promise to be grateful.

My cancer was removed before it spread.  And the baby I was so scared for that day is strolling around my writing space with Captain Jack Sparrow's spy glass in one hand and a chocolate chip cookie in the other.  He also just stole a sip of my Diet Coke.

I'm pretty grateful.

Journey Stuff

In book news, my agent is submitting my manuscript under the title, The Thank You Room. Don't get attached, as editors sometimes change these things as well. But that's the best news - some more editors will be looking at it soon.

She sent me a note today about some of the editors who will be considering it, and she referred to it by its initials. TTYR. This is my new mantra. I figure I'll say it over now and then like a prayer, willing this book into publication existence. TTYR. While performing the sign of the cross. I know this is wrong. And I know it actually crosses the border of sacrilege. And I know that I should be praying for His will and not my own. But I just have one thing to say to that. T-T-Y-R.

Thankfully I'm off to Omaha this weekend for my younger sister's baby shower. That will be the perfect distraction. After that, my agent says I should invest in a Wii.

Did I mention the list? She sent me an actual list of the editors who will be looking it over. Rejections have to be, like, what - ten times as tragic at this level? I'm sure I'll be able to get back to you on that.

In the meantime, I'm going to revel in the journey, right? And also read the memoir by Lynne Spears, mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn. Awesome Thomas Nelson sent me a copy to review. The offer was open to anyone. I figured since three of my top labels are motherhood, Hollywood, and faith - it was kind of in my genre. If I like it I'll put it next to the ones by Tammy Trent and Brooke Shields - a celebrity memoir I really loved - and I'll tell you all about how refreshing and thoughtful it is. If I don't like it, I'll put it next to Sydney Poitier's, which disappointed me.

So that's my Friday post. Kind of a hodge podge. Sort of like Jake's new bedtime routine. He suddenly graduated from getting out of bed and lying on the floor. Now he stays in the bed but he wants the door open and he calls me into the room at least three times for various things - the dog, the blanket - get the cat off my dresser - stuff like that. Then the last time he calls me in, he asks me to close the door. I do. And then I don't hear from him again until morning. Since he finally eased out of that last routine, I think I'll just enjoy this new one. It's kind of fun really. And that's my new thing - enjoying the ride.

TTYR.

look what I got

update on the book (and its ominous subject)

After my pink umbrella post, I am no longer satisfied with any picture that is not predominantly pink and splattered with rain. Have you heard of Rosie O'Donnell's yellow? She calls all things good and lovely, pure, full of light - she calls this "yellow". I think pink might be my yellow.

The book received its first rejection. I won't be posting every little update about that, because what if a publisher who loved my manuscript stopped by my blog before accepting it and saw a post titled "Rejection Number 15 - and counting"? Said editor would probably decide not only to reject it after all but quite possibly to get out of the business. The book will head out on another round of possible publishers before too long, and I will hold my breath and hope against hope and not email my agent at all and try to pretend getting published is barely even on my to-do list. I was wondering tonight if I should stop blogging so that I can focus on the next book instead. Some people don't get published at all until they have written more than one book. That makes me feel anxious to get the next one done. But I can't give up the blog. It's the writing that people are actually reading. A few of you anyway.

I go for a check-up on Friday. One of those checkups. The cancer ones. It's been about six months I think. I barely think about cancer at all between checkups. Then when I hit that familiar waiting room it all comes rushing back like breakfast when I'm pregnant. I fidget and think about old people and how I'll probably never be one. I start counting the million rays of radiation that will have been shot into my body by the time I'm forty and how many other cancers are so much more common than the one I had and are therefore probably just waiting their turn to surprise me.

Usually after seeing my surgeon, I'm all better. He's very "yellow". He always makes me feel that I really am cancer-free and that even if I wasn't he could totally handle anything cancer can dish out. So I'm looking forward to Friday after 1 p.m. When it comes, I'm going to feel very, very pink.

Wonders for Wednesday

Rebecca is hosting a blog party today in honor of her birthday in which we all post about one of our favorite Wonders. Now that you mention it, that is one of my favorite wonders. Birthdays, that is. I love them. But my favorite wonder of all, beyond these of course,














is this:















I call it fall. Bec (my Australian friend) calls it autumn, which is of course the much lovelier name. Why do I love it so much? Because I like to wrap up in these,














and go to a certain homecoming parade dressed like this:














and when else can you make your little boy look like this and get away with it?















Plus, fall is the first time I did this:















which is the happiest thing of all.

The other thing I love about fall is because it's the season that I think best represents Change - something all the seasons represent - and sometimes in life it's really good to remember that things change.















And so often, they get better.















The End.

life's too short for that

I used to think "Life is too short" statements were poetically disguised versions of "I'm too lazy to care." As if we were using an excuse to not work hard or plan for the future or worry about how we treated people. Maybe I just heard too many sarcastic versions of it. Maybe I was just a snob. Because now I'm kind of obsessed with this concept.

Life is short. Life on this planet in this body is short. Now, I don't think it's too short to watch movies. Maybe because I don't care if I die after seeing a great chick flick as long as someone I love is with me. But I had to leave my last job because of this concept. I really respect the necessity for good hard work - I do. But I hated how many Saturday nights I went to sleep with dread that my work week would start the next day. Forty hours a week in a job for which I could no longer find meaning - that was too many, considering life is short.

There are several small things in life I don't stress over because life is too short. Usually the small things involving small children. Spills and broken pictures and too many toys getting dragged from the bedroom - life's too short to care more about the neatness of my living room than the not unpleasant reminder that little boys live here.

At one point I decided life was too short not to go for my dreams with all my heart. That's how my book is out in there in the publishing universe at all. But now I think life is too short to feel desperate about its ever getting published. Do you know how long this process can take? Six months to a year before anyone offers to buy it and a year or two after that before they actually get it on the shelves. Do you know how much can happen before then? Jesus could return. That's what I think about. So sometimes I just get giddy about the fact that an agent noticed me, and that she thinks the book is worthy of publication at all. Really, for that dream, I've already done it. I wrote an entire manuscript and got it out there in the universe.

I think these days I need to know that if I was told bad news again - if I had to face an early death - I need to know that I could come home from that doctor's office, sit quietly in my little home with my children and husband around me, and be perfectly satisfied. Terribly sad that it would end but without the regret that there was so much left to do.

Lest you think I'm trying to be too heavy here, I also think life is too short for ugly shoes. There was a Flair for Facebook that said that. And I wanted it, except the "too" was spelled wrong. Life is definitely too short to spell your slogan wrong.

What about you? What is life too short for, for you? I really want to know - funny and serious both. Kind of like a really good chick flick.

you should be sitting for this

Well. Perhaps I was due. Because I just got a huge dose of happy. I've signed with a literary agent who believes in my memoir and wants to try and find a publisher for it! I told Mom I wasn't going to blab about it on the blog, because I don't want to seem unprofessional. But the way life happened today - well, I just changed my mind.

She called yesterday at around - um - 2:25 and 45 seconds? And from that moment, I lost all sanity. My poor brother called seconds later and felt concerned that I would hyperventilate. I almost forgot my children at school, and that's when the sanity really took a turn for the dark side. I got them home safely but continued to ignore them while I called people and let out all the squeals that I had promised my family I would contain while actually speaking on the phone with the agent.

By evening I started to notice something. John wasn't himself. Usually easy-going, he had suddenly developed a very short fuse with his younger brothers. When I invited Drew along on the trip to McDonalds that was supposed to have just been John and I, John grimaced and held his fingers in his ears the whole way there (Drew was reciting original poetry).

I decided to watch and listen for a while before I talked to him about the sudden attitude. But in my head, it had already begun. The inevitable tailspin of our lives because I put my career above the care of my family. I had acquired a New York literary agent! And with it, the end of life as we knew it. We were going to be like the lottery winners who end up bankrupt with broken families. Yes. All of this because John held his fingers in his ears while Drew recited poetry. If you're shocked at my dramatic reaction to the events of my day, I have to ask - you have read this blog, right?

So here's the happy ending. I made banana bread. I'm not kidding. That's how everything became right again. It was this morning. We were out of milk, and I reached for a banana bread mix that John asked me to buy weeks and weeks ago but I had yet to whip up. Today, I baked it. The house smelled like Little House on the Prairie, and everything started turning. I went to take a shower while John devoured his breakfast, and eventually I heard a knock on the door.

"Yes, Baby?"

"Thank you for making banana bread, Mama. It was delicious! So thank you."

"You're welcome, John!"

And he's been himself all day. Goodbye Dateline sob story. Hello mother of the year.

recuperating

We'd like a house just outside of town someday.  I saw a dark wood floor I loved once, I'd like that in the dining room, along with lots of windows.

I'd like to get a book published someday and maybe a song and a children's book and a screenplay . . .  
I've gotten so many lovely notes and cards (and flowers!  Thank you, Harold and Lori) the last couple of weeks.  Cards and letters are highly underrated.  I think I'll start writing them more often.
I've had a few low moments lately, but no matter how low they were, Jake could always make me grin.  He's the sunshiniest creature alive, and I'm so lucky to belong to him.

At my niece's birthday party last weekend I let them paint my hair.  Hair painting:  Also highly underrated.  

Did I mention it wasn't cancer?

I need some new shoes and jeans.  I want to start doing my Pilates again.  I have yet to open April's issue of InStyle.  I have a stack of must-reads and tons more on the list.  I hope to actually put out flowers this spring - Grandma says May Day is a good time.  And don't I have the manuscript for a novel half begun somewhere?

Hello, Life.  I'm back.

A pathetic interlude

Once upon a time, Calvin built an awesome snowball to throw at Suzie.  It was bigger even than himself, to which Hobbes asked how he was planning to lift it.  Calvin's response? 

"Reality continues to ruin my life." 

That's unfortunately how I feel today.  My first night after surgery was greatly troubled by the world's worst roommate and her angry boyfriend.  The nurses kept riling him up by asking him to leave, and then leaving themselves, so that I was alone on the other side of the curtain wondering when he would decide that they were probably asking him to leave because I had complained about the blaring television at 1 a.m.    My second night was nonstop vomiting, although at home this time.  I feel sad and unmotivated.  And it's completely awful.  I don't have cancer!  It wasn't cancer, and I thought for sure I could handle anything if I could just get that news.  Instead, I feel like Calvin.  I'd feel so great if it weren't for reality. 

A friend today told me that the third day is always the worst.  Today is technically the fourth day after surgery, but yesterday might have been worse.  So maybe tomorrow will be better.  Otherwise, my poor surgeon, whom I usually adore, is going to get an earful.  If only I could lift the stupid snowball. 

I wrote a post just before surgery about reality t.v.  I'll post it now just below this one.  It goes along with the reality theme and will cheer us both up - what with this post being all gloom and doom.

it's the journey

I've lost the will to scold.  I'm trying to watch American Idol.  There are little alphabet bath toys all over the floor which flew from the miniature tractor trailer as it went whizzing in and out of the living room and around the dining room table.  The driver of which is not happy unless both older brothers are chasing, blockading, and otherwise increasing the thrill of the ride.  And I don't care.  Well, it's not that I don't care.  It's that I love it.  Cancer, even the threat thereof, has a way of reminding me how much I love the chaos.  

John, the oldest and 8, likes to write notes on the notebook by my work computer so I will see them in the morning.  The other day it said, "I love you Mama, and I wish you didn't have canser."

Drew, the second one and 6, after hearing me thank John later that morning for his wonderful note, wanted to participate as well.  I received his paper just before he left for school:  "Don't forget to buy toothpaste."

Jake gets the blog spotlight most often, so I don't need to write about how he's been singing today.  SING-ing.  It's the sweetest sound I've ever heard.  

I've been on a serious roller coaster about this whole bone biopsy thing.  It's really difficult to face, and there is a permanent gnawing in the pit of my stomach to prove it.   It kind of feels like the editor of my life forgot to take this chapter out or something.  You know, like, "Oh wait, she doesn't need this kind of thing again, she so perfectly learned all the lessons the first time!  Just look at the way she enjoys all those toys on the floor!"  I was hoping that first bout with cancer was my one valley of the shadow, and it was all green pastures from here on out clear to heaven - which would be a long time from now.  So I've been thinking about another great John moment.  He was less than 5 and we had just seen The Neverending Story, the fantasy part of which begins and ends at the Ivory Tower.  "Huh," John said at the end.  "They're back at the Tower.  They should have just stayed there.  But that would have been a really short movie."

I guess I'd rather have this chapter than end the story altogether.  And don't think it's lost on me that John doesn't know how to spell canser.  That's gotta mean something.

she's up, she's down, she's hanging in there

I am almost three years cancer-free now, and I had gotten used to good news.  Yesterday, I had to face unpleasant news again.  I'm going to have a bone biopsy in a couple weeks.  I think . . . I think I'll stop having "worst fears", because I'm really tired of their coming true.   Cancer was a big one.  And somewhere alongside of that was a deathly fear of the bone being involved.  I blame this fear on an episode of Highway to Heaven I saw once.  But then, that is also the episode in which I learned the song Boom-Chicka-Boom, so it wasn't all bad.  

Of course, this isn't necessarily cancer.   In fact, it's really likely, that it's not.  But facing the fact that it might be has sort of cleared away the monotony fog that was covering the blue skies feeling that I've had ever since getting free of cancer the first time.  For me, there has been nothing like that happiness.  Permeating everything was the thrill that at least I was there to see it - whatever it was.  This feeling hadn't faded much.  Hardly at all, I had thought.  

When I got the call about the bone biopsy, I cried.  And my heart dropped directly into my stomach, which is a total cliche, but it became a cliche because it fits the feeling SO WELL.  And I felt scared and horrified.  

But since the bad news, in between the moments of despair, I feel intensely, deeply happy.  It's like - I remember this feeling.  The feeling that every single moment of every single day is an amazing gift.  Plus, all the lessons I learned the first time?  They won't leave me alone.  It's like my children are screaming them as they run through the house blissfully unaware that cancer is anything to fear.  The loudest one is this:  No matter what they tell me that day about the biopsy, that news can't have today.  No matter how difficult the recovery is, it doesn't have today either.  Cancer doesn't have today.   Whatever trouble is ahead, it doesn't have today, unless I let it.  

Of course, I may need reminded of this later.  In the meantime - there's always today.

Cheesecake Factory and the Holiday Inn

It's Kansas City time again. It's been about four months this time, and this week I go back to the big city for my cancer check-up. In the memoir I write this about my first trip there:

As we neared the city I flinched at the sight of every brick building on either side of me, certain that was probably the one. The terrible cancer building that was full of sick and dying people and the machines and needles and the shelves of medicine that would try to keep us alive. I wanted to turn the car around. I wanted to run. Whatever answers they had for me could not be better than not knowing. And not knowing was by itself awfully bad.

The trips there did not get much easier. In my journal later I wrote this:

Every trip to and from Kansas City to doctors we drive by Worlds of Fun, and I always so wish we were just going there. Life right now is such an unpredictable thing. I'm up, I'm down, I'm brave, I'm terrified. This doctor comforts me, that one scares me to pieces . . . . I do feel less scared of chemo now. But more scared of death. I don't want this. I want to live. And I want this baby. I want to live to see all my babies grow up. Please let that be my story. I promise to be grateful.

It's been close to three years since I wrote those. This weekend the boys are on spring break, and they are so excited about our weekend trip to Kansas City they can hardly sit through supper each night without squealing. My work day went smoothly on Sunday, and I called out to Michael, "It went fast today, I wonder what's different." Drew, though, is the one who answered from his perch on the couch in the living room, "It's probably because we're going to Kansas City this weekend, and you're so excited!" They are so ecstatic that I began to worry they had bigger plans for the trip than we did. So I asked them what it was they were expecting. "Well," John answered, "Swimming in the hotel pool . . . and don't they have some good restaurants there?"

So I think we're good. They don't yet know what the big water tower means with the Worlds of Fun logo on it. Just give 'em a hotel swimming pool and a meal or two.

I think the 2005 Serenity would be really happy if she could see this week.

good thing it's not published yet

Actual paragraph from my memoir:

Michael told me the other day that he thinks I am happier now than I have ever been.  And I know he is right.  I keep thinking maybe it's just the adrenaline from having survived a brush with death and that one day the balloon will pop and I will cry over lost keys again.  Bur for now those mundane details of life have no power over me except to be kissed and laughed over and applauded as the annoyances I'm so thrilled I still get to suffer through.

Actual moment from our evening:

Me:  Where is Jake's cup?  Why, why, WHY is it missing so often?  And why is it never in the same place twice?  I've looked for it everywhere.  EVERYwhere.  And why does it upset me so much?  It's just a cup!  (although, a ticking time bomb of stink what with its containing milk and all).

Michael:  Serenity now.

Wise guy.

Later, Jake found the cup himself.  And it actually was in a place it had been before.  And suddenly, all was right with the world.  Maybe I should change that paragraph in the book . . . .

 

shake it out

It was almost 70 degrees in our part of Missouri today.  Tomorrow we will celebrate every joke ever told about Missouri weather, because it returns to the 30s.  But today, it was in like a Lamb.

The first days of spring in my house are like turning on the lights in a room previously muted and glorified by dusk, i.e., yikes, Did I dust this winter EVER?  So Michael ran around throwing the windows open like a mad man released from the prison that was this unending season, while I grimaced and cringed and squinted my eyes to the illuminating of our winter clutter.   
We were so cozy this winter.  I like winter for its coziness, the right to turn in and cover up and shut out.  It takes me a few days of shaking-out before I can truly appreciate spring.  

I guess that's partly what the new look is about.  If it returns to the original in the next few days you will know that either Michael, Felicity, or my mother didn't like the change.  Or that the return of winter weather made me want to revert to the old like the fetal position under three blankets to which I will want to crawl on the return of nippy mornings.

Sigh.  I have such a love-hate relationship with change.

some parting gifts

Tiffany, otherwise recognizable on this blog as, "Hey, isn't that my fan?" wrote to me recently and said that a friend of hers asked this question:  Does anything good come from cancer?  My first thought?  No.  Nothing good actually comes from cancer.   But I do think good can come from facing it.  Blechk.  The whole what-doesn't-kill-us-thing.  I have a lot of good in my life - perspective, faith in the incomprehensible, appreciation, a greater sense of humor - and it all either came from or grew stronger after cancer.  Here are some more good things that came from [facing] cancer:

1.  This shirt.

2.  And the friends who brought it to me.

Actually, I think they would have brought me this shirt even if I didn't have cancer.  This is Danny and Sarah.  They went to New York City a couple months after I was diagnosed.  They came to my house on my birthday or shortly after, and they brought me a t-shirt from their trip to the First Response guys with the fire department.  You know what the numbers are?  Regis and Kelly, baby.  These were their seat numbers in the studio.  Like I said, I don't think this was exactly a cancer gesture so much as a "Serenity is going to freak completely out when we bring her New York stuff on her birthday!"  But it makes my point - facing cancer brought friends.   They were there before the cancer, but they were so there during it.

3.  My worst fear - one of the very top ones anyway - has been involuntarily but thoroughly faced.  "Just think," Felicity told me a few days after my diagnosis, "You have just faced your worst fear.  You actually had to hear the words, 'You have cancer."  For you, life can only get better."  That was so true.

4.  I laugh now like Rachel (on friends) learned to run.  If you haven't seen the episode, it's like this:  with abandon.

5.  I wrote a book.  I always wanted to.  Ever since I was very young, and I could hear Mom clacking away on her typewriter in the other room.  I started at least three novels as a child.  I had the houses completely mapped out and all the characters named and described and about three pages of the actually story.  But after cancer, I finally had a story, a whole story, and the motivation to finish it.  

6.  I got my first tattoo.  It's the size of a teeny tiny pin prick that I can't really even see any more.  Or to quote another friends moment, "This is a tattoo of the earth as seen from a great distance."  (really, really great)

7.  My shoulder doesn't hurt anymore.  It hurt for probably ten years, and none of us really knew why.  Dr. R., because of cancer, made all that pain go away.

8.  On that note, as Dr. R. said later when I could still move my arm, "See, you don't need a deltoid muscle."

9.  I sing more.  Not nearly as much on a stage, but way more in the car.

10.  The ability to say to millions of people who've been there, I know just how you feel.

cancer and the meaning of life - or not

I've been wanting to plug this book for a while.  I read it when I was pretty well past the scariest days of my cancer diagnosis.  The scariest days are when you can barely breathe because you really don't know if perhaps you've been handed your death certificate only the date is all fuzzy.  I wouldn't have wanted to read this book then.  Even when I read it, I loved it, and I laughed OUT LOUD.  But I also clicked to the author's website in trepidation lest I discover that she had died.  It was funny, but not quite so much if she hadn't beat it.  

And sadly, she didn't beat it.   When you click on her website now, you will find a goodbye message, and it is heartbreaking.  

So I have hesitated recommending the book.  I just don't know at what point other cancer patients will feel that they can laugh at the disease.  But if it is at all possible for them to laugh, this book will make them do it.  I especially remember the part when she talks about the little aches and pains we get sometimes and dismiss as nothing.  But once you have cancer, you begin to think more like you're in a movie.  Because in a movie nothing means nothing.  No character in a movie points out an ache or a pain that won't eventually come back to haunt them.  Sometimes it's hard not to think that way after one of your little aches or pains has become the biggest mountain you ever had to face.

I love the premise of this book, the title cartoon.  She rolled her eyes at those who found new meaning to life because of their illness.  I know, I know.  If you've read this blog for even a millisecond you probably know that I'm one of those people, that I analyze splinters for goodness sake - there's no way I'm getting cancer without gold-mining for the answers to all of human existence.  But, going through the process of cancer, gave me another perspective as well.  The one in which I realized that I didn't receive any answers.  Not really.  Not one single one.  I had feelings and emotions, intense ones.  And I had thoughts - both deep and inspirational.  But at no point in my process could I have said, "This is exactly why I was diagnosed with cancer.  This is the reason God allowed it to happen while I was pregnant.  This is the ten-word hypothesis for what I learned in the process.  And here is exactly what I'm going to do about it."  No way.

I want to re-read my memoir in fact, with this in mind.  If it ever gets published, I want other cancer patients and their family members to be able to say that I have written how they felt.  That I have described their fear, their questions, and some of their thoughts.  But not that I have all the answers.  That's why I like her premise.  As one of her pages describes - when you're going through it, you don't always inspirationalize yourself through each and every day.  Sometimes, you just want to be be sad about it.  You want to blink your way through another day with cancer and watch Friends reruns in order to escape your reality.  It's not always a perfect process or a perfect result.  But as with this book, sometimes it really helps to realize someone else has been there.

ever after

Fact:  I think Disney World actually is the Happiest Place on Earth.  
This belief began the usual way - the fairy tales.  For me it was Sleeping Beauty.  I just loved Prince Phillip.  I can quote the entire scene when she first meets him.  And because of her (and the fact that I didn't have the whole spinning wheel concern) Sixteen was my favorite birthday ever.  

My faith in it grew a lot the year that Mom and Dad visited and told us about the construction workers working behind tarps during the day, and landscapers adding new trees and beautiful scenery - only under the veil of nighttime - all so as not to disrupt the magic.

I went there on my honeymoon.  One morning I couldn't find my spoon for the Fruit Loops in the mini bar.  I called housekeeping, and a man arrived at the door soon in a tux holding a golden spoon.  We failed to take many pictures since we were kind of busy actually experiencing the fun, and I forgot our souvenir photo (in front of the Castle) in the hotel room, so the entire week remains as a fuzzy, first week of marriage sort of memory.  Which added to the magic for me.

Then in 2005 I was diagnosed with cancer, while pregnant.  Which, as you can imagine was fear and trauma galore.   Two days after my final radiation treatment we drove to Florida with Michael's family, and we went to Disney one day.  We stayed for the fireworks show at the end of the night, and the feeling of Magic was forever sealed for me.  It's a gorgeous show, unbelievable really, with the fireworks bursting in sync to this gorgeous music about dreams coming true and wishes and love and friendship and overcoming evil.   

The thing is, the faith I believe in is sort of fairy tale-like.  First, the hero created people both to enjoy his remarkable creation and to have friendship with him.  But they kind of messed it up, by falling for the bad guy.  Since then, unfortunately, we are born without that perfect relationship with him.  He eventually sent his Son to make the way for us again.   It's our choice whether or not to believe, but if we do, then the relationship is restored.  And in the end one day, all of this trouble and chaos and fear and sadness and ups and downs and countless tears - its all going to culminate in a new heaven and a new earth,  the happiest ever after, EVER.   I just kind of shrug when people say things like, "Christianity is merely a crutch."  Because frankly, I think we need a crutch to get through this life, and that's mine.  I absolutely believe it, but it is kind of foolish-sounding when you break it down.  Kind of like fairy tales.   Walt Disney World's fireworks show felt like that.  The faith that everything will turn out alright in the end.  

My good friend Lori G. (Hi Lori - I know you're there) sent me a link to these gorgeous photos taken by Annie Leibovitz for Disney.  It's Hollywood meets Disney - two of my favorite things, as Lori put it.  And they are just beautiful.  I can't wait to see the rest of them.  But I'm only giving you the link because I don't want to break computer etiquette and use photos for which I haven't been given permission.  Instead I'll leave you with this picture.  A shot of my boys as we were leaving just after the fireworks show that night.  As you can see, adoration for the magic is completely genetic.  They can hardly contain themselves.