Too Late for a Different Assignment?

This morning, after my husband left, wracking sobs came pouring out from deep inside my being and it took a long time for them to subside.  What trigger?  Those little moments that randomize in dreams, a concerned look from my infusion nurse yesterday, chemo coursing through my brain and playing havoc with my emotions…I really don’t know.  Seemed like a poor start to a day.

But…then I did banking, took and passed my AARP tax preparer test that I have been prepping for and avoiding avoiding avoiding, in spite being perverse (word of my day) enough to enjoy tests, finished a quilt that was to be my first when I purchased the fabric in August 2002, and cut out fabric from an actual pattern to make a top that is my first in years since my quilting and curtain forays. Took a lazy Januagray stroll on the beach, absorbing the surf sounds and low tide smells and slate-like colors, watching the sun try to penetrate the clouds on its winter path through the sky.  Picked warm roasted chicken right off he carcass and slurped it down, mmmm.  Invited folks to breakfast later this week  which is now my favorite entertainment meal, nice china, perking coffee (which I don’t drink but inhale deeply), linen tablecloth and napkins, silver flatware…yes, it is a real pleasure. Those sobs seem far away this evening.

On this 20+ year cancer journey, whether in my early days when a cure seemed probable, in the middle years when I fought with the worst chemicals ever and clung to hope, and now trying to keep cancer quiet but no longer fighting for a cure but hanging on, struggling for another year while hoping to make a difference in my days.

People on the outside looking in have often asked me how I keep positive, how I stay strong, how I cope.  They did not see me sobbing this morning, but were there when I did some charity volunteering or taught through my chemos or smiled because the sunshine felt so good or I was surrounded by the beauty of creation or the beauty of the created in my life, my children.  I don’t know how I would ever do this journey without my faith in God, without the presence of warm hugs from my Lord, without angels at the corners of my bed, without prayers in my veins.  After talking with a co-worker years ago who wanted to know how I was doing what I was doing with such good spirit, it seemed to me that my cancer was becoming my life’s witness.

Which, honestly, made me want to go up to God and say, “Hey, can you give me another assignment, please?  Can’t I be a witness without cancer?  I’d love to do the Peace Corps or something else.”  I am not saying God gave me cancer as a way to witness to my faith, but all things work to good in my life.  I’ll try.

I like to be irritable about my cancer sometimes.  I like to mourn the graduations, the weddings, the baptisms, those important events in the lives of those I love.  Maybe it’s the little things, like walks in the woods, picnics in the mountains, snuggles on the couch, and silly games together (that I want to win because I am competitive) that I will miss, although when I am gone I can’t really miss them, but I can rue the fact that these special times are finite. I like to be philosophical and consider all the positive things that cancer has forged in my character and my understanding.

Before my dad died of cancer, he would tell my mother how much he would miss her when he was gone.  Which wasn’t logical, of course, but was so True.

Last Christmas

Last Christmas

Grandmother spent her last Christmas reclining on the couch, wrapped in a flowered robe that I remember as yellow with rose-colored posies.  It covered her colostomy bag and long limbs withering from cancer, but her seven grandchildren sitting on the floor were too young to know that Santa Claus was not real or grandmothers died.  Our eyes, reflecting the colored tree lights, sparkled in anticipation of opening the presents stacked beneath the tree. While our parents and grandparents spoke with each other in hushed tones, we gleefully squealed, tearing ribbon and wrapping from trucks and blocks and dolls.  Our Christmas memories of welcoming Baby Jesus and holiday gifts were untouched that year by the adult-only drama unfolding as we gathered.  Grandmother’s children, our mommies and daddies, our aunts and uncles, were saying goodbye.

Earlier that October, Mother, my sister Susan and I had moved temporarily into upstairs bedrooms at the Chaplain’s parsonage in Portland where my grandparents lived.  It was across the street from Emanuel Hospital and next door to the nursing school my mother had attended.  My brother Gary was living there already. While no one is alive who can tell me the full story, I believe Gary’s mental retardation and hyperactivity were too much for my mother to handle with three preschool children. The grandmother who I would learn to know and love through family stories was a dynamic, “can-do” woman.  I am sure she believed she could and would make a difference in my brother’s life and insisted Gary come live with her. She channeled Gary’s energy to jumping mattresses in the basement, painting easels, and a small bike with training wheels. Mike, the boxer dog, kept an eye on him, although I’ve heard how Gary climbed out the window and ran to the cars parked along street on the corner lot.  Imagine the drivers’ annoyance to return from visiting patients in the hospital and find their windshield wipers pulled out by their roots.

While my father continued to work in Seattle, our family settled into life with Grandmother and Grandfather.   Grandfather shaved every morning in the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs, Grandmother ate breakfast of Ruskets and toast with us in the large airy kitchen, and Susan napped while I learned about colors and numbers and being the only non-black child in a kindergarten class.  Some mornings Mother asked me to “babysit” Grandmother while she ran errands.  I would entertain Grandmother by belting out songs or cutting out my Oklahoma paper dolls for us to play together.  During our stay, Grandmother was hospitalized for what I presume was surgery or treatment.  Little children were not permitted to visit, but my mother had done her nurse’s training at Emanuel Hospital and was privy to secret routes up back stairs.  Lying in her hospital bed, Grandmother was not as robust as I knew her to be, but she smiled and held my hand as we visited.

These memory snippets of a child less than six years old, fleshed out by family anecdotes, became richer when woven with my own life experiences.  When I was in college, I learned that Grandmother graduated with a double major in math and art.  My sister was artistically talented and I became a mathematician.  When I fingered wool plaids in the fabric store and pored over patterns, I felt connected to my grandmother who was known personally by all her neighborhood fabric purveyors as an excellent seamstress with impeccable taste.   I never achieved such skills, but I like to think of her as I sew.  I once overheard my dad share with his sister Helen how much I reminded him of their mother.  It was a compliment that I cherished.

I wish Grandmother was coming to spend Christmas with me this year. I would match her stride for stride as we walked the beach. We could bake Swedish cookies and sew gifts together.  I’d like to make coffee for her just the way she likes it, and wrap up all her shared stories and dreams to store in special places in my heart.  Grandmother and I might even talk about our cancer journeys, because knowing how to die is part of knowing how to live.  Spending the holidays with Grandmother would be so very special.

Now I often wonder what gifts Grandma received her last Christmas so many years ago.  I like to think that surrounded by the children she had taught and inspired, loved and corrected, reminded her of her life’s work and that the grandchildren at her feet promised her the legacy of her future.  Merry Christmas, Grandmother.

Victoria Swanbeck Randolph

April, 1895 – February, 1958

Sigh…the holidays.

I love the smell of roasting turkey, the last minute frenetic mashing-graving-roll baking-slicing-serving of the dinner on the china we had as children for special occasions just like these.  Usually by the time dinner is served I have little appetite because I have inhaled the aromas all day which activate appetite suppressants until it is time to pick the turkey.  Then, chemo or no,  I am hungry.

It is easy to close my eyes and smell, hear, see, taste, and immerse myself in these reminiscences which have enough in common with each other to create a treasured, albeit a bit generic, holiday memory.

Just about now, as the count down begins, a niggling thought creeps in to add a new twist to my Thanksgiving and Christmas spirit.  What if this is your last Thanksgiving, the final Christmas spent with your family? Yes, anyone could think that, not just someone with advanced-stage-any-disease.  And as  I don’t have a so-many-weeks-months-years-to-live prognosis, no projection, there are no Las Vegas style odds for me to answer the what if?  As I come to the table to say grace, to serve pumpkin pie, to hunker around the Christmas tree, to sort the edge pieces of the annual Christmas puzzle, I find the question swirling around in my brain and my eyes surveying the scene, my loved ones, with a certain wistfulness.

So, I wonder how many of you in this same boat ever feel tempted to scream, “Hey, serve me the stuffing first.  This could be my last Thanksgiving!” or rant, “What a stupid Christmas gift!  Why would I want something like that for my last Christmas?” or  “You’re not coming home this year? Don’t you know this might be my last?”  Oh, spread the guilt, the worry, the anxiety as thick as butter on homemade bread.

Of course I would never say those things…even if they do dare to cross my mind.

The gift of each day is wasted if I worry and wonder on the darker side of cancer.  So today I enjoy the chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, stitching shapes together for quilted table runners, writing a holiday letter to send electronically (if I don’t, then people are afraid to call me up in case I died and didn’t tell them, hee hee), and enjoying the winter hummingbirds visit the feeder.  And paying bills, doing laundry, and cleaning out the fridge.  I’ll do the same on Thanksgiving, on Christmas, and enjoy the moment. Because that’s what I have.

When taking center Stage is…questionable?

I like the fact that is has taken YEARS for me to look back on my talent show act in seventh grade with embarrassment.  Being a bit of a nerd/dweeb/geek at that awkward age (before those terms were ever used), I never told anyone, friends or family, that I was trying out for the school talent show.  I auditioned after school and was selected. On my own, I took center stage with a monologue about  the “correct” versions of  nursery rhymes.  No one else performed by themselves…no dancing star, violin virtuoso, singing diva.  In fact, I recall most of the acts being eighth and ninth grade groups lip-syncing to Petula Clark’s “Downtown” or Herman Hermit’s “Mrs Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”  Whatever was I thinking?  If I hadn’t been so clueless about the norms of junior high talent shows and what I was getting into, I might be able to chalk it up to courage and initiative. I can’t.

Slow learner, I did it again coming out of grad school with a master’s in math.  Taking center stage at the peak of affirmative action, “sure, I can do that job” which was supervising a crew in a phone company garage that didn’t especially want me there.  The youngest at 22 and the only woman on the premises, I was naive, ingenous, simple, innocent… I was unprepared for just what I was stepping into.  Whatever was I thinking?  It was a steep learning curve to master.

Now the third time on center stage…sharing my cancer openly, even the stage four diagnosis.  A cancer diagnosis is hard to hide when one is female and bald (as I was in 2000), but  I can pass as a fairly healthy woman with treatments keeping my cancer relatively quiet.  I have met many with cancer who choose to keep their circle of sharing small and private.  I respect that.  I understand that, especially after a woman at our large church said, “Oh, I know you.  You’re the one who had cancer and the hats and scarves.  If I had cancer, I would stay home until is was all over.”  Yes, being public and open about a diagnosis has the risk of identifying me as “the one who has cancer,” and subject to surprising norms about how a cancer victim should behave.  However, her feedback only strengthened my resolve to share my diagnosis, because life is too short to stay home with cancer.  I hope I am sharing my cancer positively…heavens, I don’t seek nor want pity.  What do I appreciate the most? A smile or cheer to continue to fight, to live, to laugh, to love..what everyone needs in this journey on earth.

Hearth Stages and Statue Maker

My childhood house in south Seattle fit a lot in a small space.   Traditional skinny red fireplace brick covered most of one wall in our living room.  There was no mantle,  but its long white hearth at firebox height made a perfect stage. I had a cowgirl outfit with skirt, western shirt, and a hat on laces that hung down my back below ribboned pigtails.  Whatever I wore on my feet was perfect for dancing across this stage, belting out a song, and performing for an invisible audience.  My older brother Gary was not interested in my antics, and my younger sister Susan was safely napping in her crib in the room we shared at the back of the house.  Mother was busy cooking or ironing in the kitchen, so without critics and with a crowd of my imagination, I took center stage.

To quote the Bard himself,  “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.  They have their exits and their entrances, and one  woman  in her time plays many parts.”

Growing up, the kids in my neigbhood would gather on my front lawn in those sweet summer hours after dinner, before the call to come in and take a bath and put on pajamas, while the long rays of the sun’s golden spotlights created center stage moments as we played Statue Maker.  Spun by the judge, we landed in preposterous positions and waited for the judge to whisper the category in our ears.  Were we to be funny or scary, lovely or hideous?  At the signal to go, we let our creative juices go crazy, gyrating, twisting, leaping, shaking, yet silent like living statues should be.  Jealously eager for the judge’s approving eye, for a stellar performance, we hoped to be selected as the best.  At the judge’s command to stop, we froze into our statue pose and waited…waited…waited for the best in category academy award, waited to be chosen and  assume the role of judge for the next round. Silly game that had all the unstructured freedom that childhood should be.

As I muse on the stages (in all its meanings) of my life, I seem to recognize the game of Statue Maker in my experiences.  How many times have I been spun into challenging arenas, worked my heart out for attention or recognition, waited to be judged and not found lacking?

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