if I'm not working and Fred doesn't have a meeting, we find each other on the couch and settle in. Fred has his laptop open and catches up on work but we also watch TV together and he gives me a foot massage and we catch up with each other.
After a summer of watching a lot of shit (I mean like the Japanese game show thing and hours of Larry King on Michael Jackson) we were very psyched for "The Office" coming back last night and it delivered. We had started watching "Parks and Recreation" last spring, almost gave up on it after two episodes, decided to stay with it and now are very into that, too. So yeah, in the wild wacky trendsetting bi-coastal cosmopolitan lives that we lead, I have to humbly admit that Thursday night tv is something we look do forward to.
Fred always goes up to bed after those shows and I stay up and watch "Grey's Anatomy" that we've tivoed. I was kind of sleepy last night and though about going up to bed, too but then felt excited to see "Grey's" on our list and turned it on without thinking.
There was Izzy, almost dead from her (advanced) cancer, scarf covering her bald head. I was okay with all of that, with her almost dying but coming back. I was fine with her baldness. I remember even writing in my blog last spring a line like "Izzy's story is not my story" because there I was, in the midst of cancer treatment and what resonated was just the experience of being a young woman and your life stopping dead--pun okay--in its tracks.
And how what I saw last night made me feel like in fact Izzy's story felt a little too close to my story in that
I wanted to punch Christina, with her glib attitude, sucking her cancer popsicle while Izzy waited for treatment, I wanted to stand up for Izzy and tell Christina to get the hell out of there if she can't deal and to shove her sarcastic remarks up her ass. You don't need her, Iz. (I found out quickly who the people were that I could count on 100% who were there whatever my emotion was and who didn't project their fears onto me or put up defenses like smart-ass remarks and the "friends" who weren't there quickly became not a part of my cancer experience). (or my life anymore).
and then Korev...come on. That just shredded my heart, I mean, his avoiding Izzy, him withholding sex, him not embracing her vulnerability (admitedly complicated with her experiencing the loss of former lover George). I wanted to really punch him, to smack him hard.
I know real women who have lived that; my friend Ariel divorced less than a year after her breast cancer diagnosis. The cancer experience made clear to her what was missing in her marriage; her husband was not one of the people who was 100% there for her, no matter what.
A lot of people have felt and expressed that I have been strong and courageous through this process. Maybe I have been, I feel like I did what I had to do more or less. But man, I knew, there was never any doubt, that Fred had my back the whole time, the entire time.
I haven't once felt ugly or self-consious or strange or unsexual or most of all, unloved. Not for a minute.
And Izzy did not deserve that from Korev and I hope he can turn it around because I like him and I get that he's scared shitless. But these moments call us to rise up. These are the real moments. And even if your partner gets cancer and you are scared shitless, you have to be there for them 100%.
And that devastated me seeing that not happen for Izzy or maybe I just hadn't had the time yet to fully process what I've had and how grateful I am for Fred
and our funny little dates at 9PM on the couch
when there is no where in the world I would rather be, than sitting with him on the couch
watching bad tv.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wednesday was my last day of treatment;
I thought maybe finishing would feel like nothing at all or like a letdown, but it was ecstatic. At Fox Chase in the radiation department waiting room there's a bell on the wall by the elevator and when you finish your treatment you ring it and everyone stops what they're doing and claps for you and while I was in the dressing room where I had for 32 mornings taken off my top and put on a green gown and then come out of treatment and taken the green gown off and put my top back on again I thought
I'm not going to do it, I'm just going to walk out quietly and be done but then the bell was there on the wall and the receptionist caught my eyes and I grabbed and rang it three loud times and everyone there, people I didn't know checking in for their appointments and two interns running down the steps into the lobby, dripping their coffees, and the spouses sitting on the couches reading the same magazines every morning
they all stopped and clapped
for me.
***
and I caught my reflection in the parking garage window leaving Fox Chase and I paused making eye contact with myself and I thought
I am really done with this now
and there was something different in my eyes, a kind of focus, a kind of looking at things clearly, looking at things straight
that comes from having faced my death and come out to life again, loving it.
***
From there I went home, took the kids to school and took myself to Starbucks for a coffee and scone. I hadn't had much time to pause between George starting kindergarden and my really busy time at work starting up and finishing up treatment. I've been eating really extra healthily but decided to get and eat a scone, the cinnamon chip kind with icing, which felt really decadent. I sat down in a comfy chair, grabbed someone's New York Times Arts section and started skimming an article about Kanye West and his debacle which I had entirely missed. It felt fun and cheap to read about pop celebrity drama while nibbling my scone
and then it hit me again, pausing to look around at the mothers with their toddlers and the students with their laptops and the business people having meetings, that this morning I actually finished it--
all of my cancer treatment, I made it--
and for a second I wanted to stand up in Starbucks and since there was no bell there just shout,
start shouting or just speaking in a loud, joyful voice
listen everybody this is what happened to me and I survived it and I'm alive
(have you ever had a crazy thought come over you for about three seconds like you think you could jump down from somewhere really high and not get hurt and then less than one second later you know not to do that because of course you would get hurt
the moment was kind of like that.) i finished my scone quickly because i had an appointment to get to.
****
and I don't mean a dr. appt, nooooooooooo! I had been given a gift certificate from the parents of my teen group for an exclusive-ish spa and I saved it to use for my last day and i made an appointment for a body wrap massage.
it was awesome. exfoliation, moisturizing and lots of deep touch. i let myself drift into a sleepless kind of rem zone and when it was over i felt even more done with the cancer than ever. i had new skin.
****
the timing has been perfect finishing two days before Rosh Hashana, the new year. For a long time now, maybe ten or twelve years i've been leading children's services for the High Holy days. I told Rabbi Yael about a week ago that i was a little worried, that i felt kind of unmotivated about the holidays.
i said it feels frankly all kind of superfluous to me, the rituals, the examination, i have spent seven months looking at my life and death, i've done the work already.
and Yael said yes, that's right, and to be in that, to hold that, to know that. to not force anything else to happen.
last night when Rosh Hashana began, Fred and I took the kids to his parents house for dinner, I felt just a simple kind of happiness and sweetness that is hard for me to put into words. i guess i am feeling both the strength in me and also a kind of lightness, of empty pockets, of having done a lot of work of letting go.
the services i lead today were okay, probably not the best i've ever lead.
****
June found Bunny Wednesday afternoon. We were in her room and I started cleaning her closet, one of about a thousand projects in the house that I couldn't get to all spring and summer because of the energy I had to reserve to get myself through chemo and radiation. I pulled out a fabric bag that I had put all of her toy pocketbooks in and there was Bunny.
June was excited, but not as much as I was and Bunny's mostly just hung around her room for the last few days. So there.
I've had a few wisps of hair framing my face that never fell out when the rest of my hair did. They've made me very happy all summer because I could pull them out and down, around a scarf or hat and from the front you'd never know I was really bald.
But my new hair is coming in stronger every day, dark little spikes and the long pieces of auburn hair were getting in the way of my new hair coming in evenly. Yesterday morning, before erev Rosh Hashana, I took George's purple craft scissors and I cut them off.
****
After my spa treatment I went for a long walk in Chestnut Hill and it started to rain. I ducked into a sandwich shop at the top of the hill. It was noon by then and the shop was busy with take-out orders. I stepped to the front of the counter to see what looked good.
As I was debating whether to keep indulging or get back on the wagon (went with the haverti on black bread, you decide), a woman behind the counter looked at me and said
Hang in there. You'll get through it.
I was breathless for a minute; no one in the last four months since I've been wearing scarves has said anything so direct.
I'm doing great I said I finished today.
That's wonderful she said it only gets better it's been a year for me
Yeah yeah I said blinking weeping
and realizing that around us everyone had stopped their busy ordering and were shushed up for a minute
and there in the sandwich shop i rang the bell again
i did it i did it i made it!
****
i sang the songs with the children today, apples and honey for rosh hashana, we sang the shema and marched with the Torah and I opened it up and read from the Torah, from the first words
Bereshit, in the beginning of God forming the heavens and the earth
there was tohu v'vohu, unformed chaos and ruach, wind or was it the spirit of God
floating over the surface of the water
and God said let there be light
and there was light
and God saw the light was good
and the light God called day and the darkness God called night
****
and really, to tell you the God's honest truth here, my ambivalence about this holiday is that I am, honestly, a little shaky, talking about it all right now, talking about the new year. Knowing that a year ago I had no idea what was going to come, knowing that I have no idea what is ahead. That none of us does.
But I still love it, I do, the ritual and the children, the round challahs, the apples, the shofar. There is less innocence and less sleepiness in me now. Marking of time is different.
September 16th is going to be my anniversary day from now on and Rosh Hashana, God willing, will take me back to this complicated feeling of what it means to be done.
I'm not going to do it, I'm just going to walk out quietly and be done but then the bell was there on the wall and the receptionist caught my eyes and I grabbed and rang it three loud times and everyone there, people I didn't know checking in for their appointments and two interns running down the steps into the lobby, dripping their coffees, and the spouses sitting on the couches reading the same magazines every morning
they all stopped and clapped
for me.
***
and I caught my reflection in the parking garage window leaving Fox Chase and I paused making eye contact with myself and I thought
I am really done with this now
and there was something different in my eyes, a kind of focus, a kind of looking at things clearly, looking at things straight
that comes from having faced my death and come out to life again, loving it.
***
From there I went home, took the kids to school and took myself to Starbucks for a coffee and scone. I hadn't had much time to pause between George starting kindergarden and my really busy time at work starting up and finishing up treatment. I've been eating really extra healthily but decided to get and eat a scone, the cinnamon chip kind with icing, which felt really decadent. I sat down in a comfy chair, grabbed someone's New York Times Arts section and started skimming an article about Kanye West and his debacle which I had entirely missed. It felt fun and cheap to read about pop celebrity drama while nibbling my scone
and then it hit me again, pausing to look around at the mothers with their toddlers and the students with their laptops and the business people having meetings, that this morning I actually finished it--
all of my cancer treatment, I made it--
and for a second I wanted to stand up in Starbucks and since there was no bell there just shout,
start shouting or just speaking in a loud, joyful voice
listen everybody this is what happened to me and I survived it and I'm alive
(have you ever had a crazy thought come over you for about three seconds like you think you could jump down from somewhere really high and not get hurt and then less than one second later you know not to do that because of course you would get hurt
the moment was kind of like that.) i finished my scone quickly because i had an appointment to get to.
****
and I don't mean a dr. appt, nooooooooooo! I had been given a gift certificate from the parents of my teen group for an exclusive-ish spa and I saved it to use for my last day and i made an appointment for a body wrap massage.
it was awesome. exfoliation, moisturizing and lots of deep touch. i let myself drift into a sleepless kind of rem zone and when it was over i felt even more done with the cancer than ever. i had new skin.
****
the timing has been perfect finishing two days before Rosh Hashana, the new year. For a long time now, maybe ten or twelve years i've been leading children's services for the High Holy days. I told Rabbi Yael about a week ago that i was a little worried, that i felt kind of unmotivated about the holidays.
i said it feels frankly all kind of superfluous to me, the rituals, the examination, i have spent seven months looking at my life and death, i've done the work already.
and Yael said yes, that's right, and to be in that, to hold that, to know that. to not force anything else to happen.
last night when Rosh Hashana began, Fred and I took the kids to his parents house for dinner, I felt just a simple kind of happiness and sweetness that is hard for me to put into words. i guess i am feeling both the strength in me and also a kind of lightness, of empty pockets, of having done a lot of work of letting go.
the services i lead today were okay, probably not the best i've ever lead.
****
June found Bunny Wednesday afternoon. We were in her room and I started cleaning her closet, one of about a thousand projects in the house that I couldn't get to all spring and summer because of the energy I had to reserve to get myself through chemo and radiation. I pulled out a fabric bag that I had put all of her toy pocketbooks in and there was Bunny.
June was excited, but not as much as I was and Bunny's mostly just hung around her room for the last few days. So there.
I've had a few wisps of hair framing my face that never fell out when the rest of my hair did. They've made me very happy all summer because I could pull them out and down, around a scarf or hat and from the front you'd never know I was really bald.
But my new hair is coming in stronger every day, dark little spikes and the long pieces of auburn hair were getting in the way of my new hair coming in evenly. Yesterday morning, before erev Rosh Hashana, I took George's purple craft scissors and I cut them off.
****
After my spa treatment I went for a long walk in Chestnut Hill and it started to rain. I ducked into a sandwich shop at the top of the hill. It was noon by then and the shop was busy with take-out orders. I stepped to the front of the counter to see what looked good.
As I was debating whether to keep indulging or get back on the wagon (went with the haverti on black bread, you decide), a woman behind the counter looked at me and said
Hang in there. You'll get through it.
I was breathless for a minute; no one in the last four months since I've been wearing scarves has said anything so direct.
I'm doing great I said I finished today.
That's wonderful she said it only gets better it's been a year for me
Yeah yeah I said blinking weeping
and realizing that around us everyone had stopped their busy ordering and were shushed up for a minute
and there in the sandwich shop i rang the bell again
i did it i did it i made it!
****
i sang the songs with the children today, apples and honey for rosh hashana, we sang the shema and marched with the Torah and I opened it up and read from the Torah, from the first words
Bereshit, in the beginning of God forming the heavens and the earth
there was tohu v'vohu, unformed chaos and ruach, wind or was it the spirit of God
floating over the surface of the water
and God said let there be light
and there was light
and God saw the light was good
and the light God called day and the darkness God called night
****
and really, to tell you the God's honest truth here, my ambivalence about this holiday is that I am, honestly, a little shaky, talking about it all right now, talking about the new year. Knowing that a year ago I had no idea what was going to come, knowing that I have no idea what is ahead. That none of us does.
But I still love it, I do, the ritual and the children, the round challahs, the apples, the shofar. There is less innocence and less sleepiness in me now. Marking of time is different.
September 16th is going to be my anniversary day from now on and Rosh Hashana, God willing, will take me back to this complicated feeling of what it means to be done.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
My life is changing quickly and dramatically
this week and as if sending a child to kindergarden and finishing cancer treatment wasn't enough change for me, Google changed the way that they operate Blogger accounts during this same week that I changed my email address and so I couldn't log in to my old account to get the instructions that Google sent there.
So there it is.
I had no choice but to start this new blog, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, Part 2
because I really wanted to write tonight, so I stopped cursing after about 15 minutes and just moved on.
I had been thinking about whether I wanted to keep blogging or not when my treatment finishes or if this blog was done and now Goggle has nudged me to make the decision. I'm still blogging, but times have changed baby, a new chapter has begun.
****
Summer ended quickly. I was swimming with the kids last week and it was still in the mid-eighties most of the week and then Monday, Labor Day, the air started to smell like fall and Tuesday morning when I walked George to school, we could feel a cool breeze against our short sleeves.
And I thought I would be teary, walking out our door, past two more houses on Union Avenue and then crossing the street to Myers Elementary School, but I wasn't. George was wearing his new Spiderman backpack and he was bouncing down the street, smiling and beaming. All of the work I had done to prep him for the morning...it worked. Because of George's expressive language delays, it's hard for me to always know how much he understands in any given situation, but when we walked up to the front door of Myers and he took Mrs. Beck, his new teacher's hand, without so much as a whine or a "Mommmy!", and walked in the door with her, I knew that he got that kindergarden was starting today and he felt ready and okay.
The tears came for me a few hours later, the sudden longing for him hard for me to bear. Wondering how he was doing, if he was okay. Imagining how he felt at his new school. Then I let myself really go into the emotion, into the realization of this change in our life, of the milestone we had reached. How I easily I can remember what it felt like to hold him as a baby, how hard it was for me to separate from him then.
I thought about how these years that were his early childhood were so different from anything I could have imagined and about the heartbreak, confusion and fear that came with discovering his delays. And I felt a kind of letting go of those emotions, a kind of crying them out of my body, because the boy I walked to kindergarden did not inspire fear in me at all; he inspired me with a kind of incredible optimism and faith and of course indescribable love.
***
June lost Bunny sometime during the summer and she seemed not to notice. She was busy with camp and swimming and riding her bike with training wheels and she's into more sophisticated things now, mermaids and fairies and the Disney princesses, anyway.
June turned 4 on Sunday and the week before we moved her out of her crib and into her big girl car bed which used to be George's. We had been talking about it for months, about how her crib would go to Uncle Jon's baby and how big kids sleep in big kid beds.
But she doesn't like sleeping in it yet. She comes in our bed at 2 or 3 or 5AM and she nuzzles against me and cries like a little cat until she falls back asleep.
And she doesn't like people making a big deal about George going to kindergarden. And she doesn't like hat she can't go into Myers with George. And she doesn't like me going out in the morning to do an errand (radiation at Fox Chase) without taking her. It's a lot of stuff she doesn't like right now.
Then today in the car when I got her from school (which she likes very much), she started talking about Bunny and how she missed her and how she lost her and how she wanted Bunny back.
And the loss of Bunny, meaning the loss of Bunny for June and the loss of June having Bunny for me (meaning June as a baby) was too much loss on top of just two days ago feeling the visceral change of George from a little kid to an elementary kid and me nearing the end of radiation having so many feelings surfacing about all of the losses I've felt over the last six months
and I just looked at June and showed her my tears and I said, "I'm sorry I let you loss Bunny." And crying I took her hand and tried to hold her
but she pushed against me, surprised and thinking me a little pathetic, I think, and said, "Bunny will just hop back."
I nodded in agreement, pulled myself together as much I could using an old McDonald's napkine full of George's gum to blow my nose and wipe my eyes, and then June and I drove to Modell's sporting goods store to buy June shin guards (Shin Guards, hello, she's 4!) since she's starting on a soccer team (more change for us, and hell change is good) later this week.
****
and I just want to interrupt all this to say I know there are big things going on in the world and Obama inspires me every day more because of how he is trying to make change happen in the face of blithering morons and I watch and fall asleep to Anderson Cooper in Afghanistan every night, I just wanted to take a moment to say I am aware of the greater world, I am, I'm just sort of very full with what is here, right here, on my plate--
****
and besides crying when I've felt it and really needed to cry this week, I've had something else going on that has helped me to stay present and grounded: I've just kind of let myself feel happy and not worry about lots of things that I might have, say a year ago, worried a lot about (like, in just over a week I have to lead six children's services for rosh hashana and really at this point none of them are planned).
because even though i am sort of exhausted and unhinged, i'm kind of incredibly happy, too. George has had a really great start in kindergarden! He is in the right class and that is such a blessing.
and my treatment is almost over! and i know there are lots of feelings about my experience with cancer that i have yet to unpack, but when i think i only have 4 more treatments at fox chase, i am full of anticipation and relief.
****
and last night, speaking of change and loss and new things and a new blog and a new year coming whether i;m ready or not, i was taking my scarf off and i sort of rubbed the back of my head
and i felt a little bit of hair back there.
it is just fuzz, just like you know, would be on a baby.
like the fuzz George had or June
or that my mom said I had because I was a bald baby until I was a year old.
and it's funny now to think how much I acted liek June acted about not missing Bunny when really today in the cool September air I cried a little because I've missed my hair so much.
So there it is.
I had no choice but to start this new blog, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, Part 2
because I really wanted to write tonight, so I stopped cursing after about 15 minutes and just moved on.
I had been thinking about whether I wanted to keep blogging or not when my treatment finishes or if this blog was done and now Goggle has nudged me to make the decision. I'm still blogging, but times have changed baby, a new chapter has begun.
****
Summer ended quickly. I was swimming with the kids last week and it was still in the mid-eighties most of the week and then Monday, Labor Day, the air started to smell like fall and Tuesday morning when I walked George to school, we could feel a cool breeze against our short sleeves.
And I thought I would be teary, walking out our door, past two more houses on Union Avenue and then crossing the street to Myers Elementary School, but I wasn't. George was wearing his new Spiderman backpack and he was bouncing down the street, smiling and beaming. All of the work I had done to prep him for the morning...it worked. Because of George's expressive language delays, it's hard for me to always know how much he understands in any given situation, but when we walked up to the front door of Myers and he took Mrs. Beck, his new teacher's hand, without so much as a whine or a "Mommmy!", and walked in the door with her, I knew that he got that kindergarden was starting today and he felt ready and okay.
The tears came for me a few hours later, the sudden longing for him hard for me to bear. Wondering how he was doing, if he was okay. Imagining how he felt at his new school. Then I let myself really go into the emotion, into the realization of this change in our life, of the milestone we had reached. How I easily I can remember what it felt like to hold him as a baby, how hard it was for me to separate from him then.
I thought about how these years that were his early childhood were so different from anything I could have imagined and about the heartbreak, confusion and fear that came with discovering his delays. And I felt a kind of letting go of those emotions, a kind of crying them out of my body, because the boy I walked to kindergarden did not inspire fear in me at all; he inspired me with a kind of incredible optimism and faith and of course indescribable love.
***
June lost Bunny sometime during the summer and she seemed not to notice. She was busy with camp and swimming and riding her bike with training wheels and she's into more sophisticated things now, mermaids and fairies and the Disney princesses, anyway.
June turned 4 on Sunday and the week before we moved her out of her crib and into her big girl car bed which used to be George's. We had been talking about it for months, about how her crib would go to Uncle Jon's baby and how big kids sleep in big kid beds.
But she doesn't like sleeping in it yet. She comes in our bed at 2 or 3 or 5AM and she nuzzles against me and cries like a little cat until she falls back asleep.
And she doesn't like people making a big deal about George going to kindergarden. And she doesn't like hat she can't go into Myers with George. And she doesn't like me going out in the morning to do an errand (radiation at Fox Chase) without taking her. It's a lot of stuff she doesn't like right now.
Then today in the car when I got her from school (which she likes very much), she started talking about Bunny and how she missed her and how she lost her and how she wanted Bunny back.
And the loss of Bunny, meaning the loss of Bunny for June and the loss of June having Bunny for me (meaning June as a baby) was too much loss on top of just two days ago feeling the visceral change of George from a little kid to an elementary kid and me nearing the end of radiation having so many feelings surfacing about all of the losses I've felt over the last six months
and I just looked at June and showed her my tears and I said, "I'm sorry I let you loss Bunny." And crying I took her hand and tried to hold her
but she pushed against me, surprised and thinking me a little pathetic, I think, and said, "Bunny will just hop back."
I nodded in agreement, pulled myself together as much I could using an old McDonald's napkine full of George's gum to blow my nose and wipe my eyes, and then June and I drove to Modell's sporting goods store to buy June shin guards (Shin Guards, hello, she's 4!) since she's starting on a soccer team (more change for us, and hell change is good) later this week.
****
and I just want to interrupt all this to say I know there are big things going on in the world and Obama inspires me every day more because of how he is trying to make change happen in the face of blithering morons and I watch and fall asleep to Anderson Cooper in Afghanistan every night, I just wanted to take a moment to say I am aware of the greater world, I am, I'm just sort of very full with what is here, right here, on my plate--
****
and besides crying when I've felt it and really needed to cry this week, I've had something else going on that has helped me to stay present and grounded: I've just kind of let myself feel happy and not worry about lots of things that I might have, say a year ago, worried a lot about (like, in just over a week I have to lead six children's services for rosh hashana and really at this point none of them are planned).
because even though i am sort of exhausted and unhinged, i'm kind of incredibly happy, too. George has had a really great start in kindergarden! He is in the right class and that is such a blessing.
and my treatment is almost over! and i know there are lots of feelings about my experience with cancer that i have yet to unpack, but when i think i only have 4 more treatments at fox chase, i am full of anticipation and relief.
****
and last night, speaking of change and loss and new things and a new blog and a new year coming whether i;m ready or not, i was taking my scarf off and i sort of rubbed the back of my head
and i felt a little bit of hair back there.
it is just fuzz, just like you know, would be on a baby.
like the fuzz George had or June
or that my mom said I had because I was a bald baby until I was a year old.
and it's funny now to think how much I acted liek June acted about not missing Bunny when really today in the cool September air I cried a little because I've missed my hair so much.
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