I gave Chris season tickets to the symphony this year. It’s not quite like Homer giving Marge a bowling ball, since Chris likes the symphony, but the subject did come up when we went last night.
The program centered around a universal theme. We heard Strauss’ Sphärenklänge (Music of the Spheres) and Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony during the first half of the program. The second half was Gustav Holst’s The Planets.
During the performance of The Planets, the DSO projected a series of images of the planet being performed (Venus: The Bringer of Peace, etc.) on a giant screen above the orchestra, footage courtesy of NASA and the Jet Propulsion laboratory. Prior to each movement, a narrator told us what the images would be so that we would know what we were seeing. The effect was similar to that of the rock-n-roll laser light shows I used to go to at the Miami Planetarium, but more erudite, and not so many lasers. I was glad I had not stuffed a laser pointer in my purse. I bet Chris is glad too.
On the way home, I asked him why live performance is so much better than listening to recorded music, even though recordings don’t have the mistakes and missed notes you sometimes get live.
“When they record it, they have a limited number of microphones but when you hear it live, the music comes at you from all directions.” Chris is so wise.
Holst’s music is supposed to inspire self-reflection, and so my thoughts drifted toward memory during the movement entitled “Saturn: The Bringer of Old Age,” which harkens to a particular goal of mine, and which reminded me of how close I have come to not seeing Saturn’s promise come to fruition. When I was sick, a great many people urged me to get out and do the things I enjoy with the unspoken, or occasionally spoken, message, “Don’t just sit around in your pajamas playing Warcraft all the time.” Specifically, my friends and family urged me to get out and go hear some live music.
I refused.
I refused for several reasons, all falling under the large umbrella of “I don’t want to.”
When I was hit with the double whammy of death, advanced cancer and the chemotherapy strong enough to kill it, I felt too sick to listen to music. The notes blurred into a cacophony that made me want to pull a pillow over my head and sleep. Often, silence would have the same effect, but for a time, music ceased to exist for me.
I knew I could not sit still for a 90-minute program, even with an intermission, without having to vomit.
I was afraid of the scene, of being seen, of showing up and thereby ruining the experience for others. Generally, I did not have the sense of shame that some cancer patients often have because of our altered (batshit scary) appearance. I wore the same baggy jeans everywhere, and a large sweatshirt, sunglasses and a ski cap, and if I made people uncomfortable I took passive aggressive pleasure in that. But dressing up for the symphony is fun, and of my alternatives, to go in jeans and a sweatshirt, or to get dressed up and fake it, the best option by far was to stay home and play Warcraft. Now, when I see people out in public whose appearance sets them apart not in a good way — amputees, obese people, people with terrible teeth, or massive scars or moles or birthmarks, people whose appearance is such that I have to try hard not to do a double-take — I want to tell them how much respect I have for the courage they have shown simply by leaving the house, but of course, I don’t.
Last night I wore my super slinky electric blue halter dress that gives me a 100% chance of getting lucky with Chris and the ancient heirloom knotted silk shawl with the 20 inch fringe that my grandmother gave me on my wedding day, that her grandmother wore on her wedding day, and that she wore on her wedding day. I felt great about the way I looked. It was one of the highlights of my evening.
The other highlight was hearing the narrator stumble around the pronunciation of Uranus. I’ll never grow up.
I have wonderful friends. Really, I do. One of my fabulous friends, author of Ask Moxie, asked me to pen a guest post for her blog, so here it is.
Thanks, Moxie, for giving me a forum. You rock, as you have since college days.
I do not regret a lot of things, mostly because my wonderful parents started talking to me about good judgement from the time we were in diapers, and I am proud to say that the very words “good judgement” cause my own darling small monst… I mean wonderful children to roll their eyes and lament, “we know, Mom, we KNOW, good judgement, blah blah.”
Here is one of my regrets.
Charles, my older brother, and I were very lucky in high school to have a great group of friends, and I know they were great because they have all grown up to have great lives and careers and families, and, if you are reading this blog, please know that I thank God every day for your friendship that allowed me to escape high school unscathed. One of our friends was a guy named Ricky. Ricky was funner, and funnier, than the rest of us, which is saying a lot, since we were a funny crowd of kids. Ricky has this awesome car, an ancient brown ?? generic American car, a Chevy? Buick? I can’t tell cars apart, but anyway, it doesn’t matter, because what set Ricky’s car apart was that it was an heirloom. I think he had to put lead powder in the gas tank, or maybe it was the eighties and you could still buy leaded gas. It had fins. The upholstery — was it torn, or had it been redone in leopard? I can’t remember. Ricky’s car also started without benefit of a key. As he said, “Who would steal this jalopy?” and he had a point. Ricky was always great about giving rides to those of us who did not have a car, but the ride always came with a caveat that we might not get there, or that we might have to get out and push.
One day, Charles and I sneaked out after school and before band practice and moved Ricky’s car to the other side of the parking lot. We thought it was funny. But it wasn’t. Ricky thought someone had stolen his car, that he would have to explain to his parents that the car they had worked so hard to get him was missing, that he had been irresponsible and lost it. Eventually, he found it, and (I think) forgave us, but as he said, “It was a bad couple of hours until I found my car.”
I thought about that episode when I saw this video from Dan Savage this morning. In case you are wondering, when I think to myself, “Do I really want to put in the effort to write as much, and as well, as I can, I look at Dan Savage and how much he has been able to alter people’s opinions with the power of his pen, and I think, “I can try.”
Ricky (or Rick, now). I am truly sorry. I have no idea how much teasing you got when we weren’t around from people who were uncomfortable with your gayness, your different-ness, your fabulous sense of humor, and fashion, and your wonderful way of being that made you such a delight. I never saw the quiet moments alone when you were struggling with your identity. I never thought. I know from facebook that your life has blossomed as it ought to have, as you deserve, and I am so glad.
You forgave me once, for a prank, that I participated in when I did not know what I was doing. If you are reading this blog, I hope that you will forgive me again, when I look back in retrospect and see the full extent of that misguided and cruel joke. I regret it as much as anything I have ever done.
I met up with my good friend CJ for lunch this week. Ostensibly we were going to rewire lamps Wednesday morning after the following text exchange over the weekend
CJ: Where do you go to get your lamps rewired?
Me: I hear Lakewood Lighting is good and cheap, but I gotta say, I do it myself.
CJ: You do!?!?!!?! Is it easy?
Me: … i can do it … a chimpanzee probably could …
C: Stop saying that about my friend. Will you show me how?
So we made plans to rewire lamps in the morning and then go have lunch at the Hare Krishna Temple which is near my house, but on Wednesday, I wound up having coffee with some friends and forgetting my cell phone so I left a message for CJ from another friend’s cell phone saying I would be late, and then I stopped by to see my 91-year-old neighbor. Finally I got home and there was an email from CJ, saying that she was running late, and could we please meet at 11:00 instead of 9:00 and OH, she had lost her cell phone so could I please call her at home. I called her and explained that I was late calling because of all of the above reasons, and that 11:00 would be fine but 11:30 would be better because I had to shower and clean up the breakfast dishes. She got to my house at 11:45 and took a tour of my new house and garden including the remnants of breakfast still on the kitchen table. We were both hungry, so instead of rewiring lamps we went to lunch.
The restaurant at the Hare Krishna temple near my house is spectacular. It’s beautiful, and the food is amazing, and cheap! I can’t believe I never went there before. I said as much to my friend, and, furthermore, I said that someone should write a book, a Newcomer’s Guide to Dallas, because Dallas has so many wonderful surprises hiding in plain sight and the only way you can find out about them is by word of mouth, or to read D Magazine for an entire year or five.
I think I shall write that book! I also think I shall add “Cool Places to Go in Dallas” to this blog, which is a whole lot more interesting than writing about cancer all the time.
Everyone likes to feel unique, special, different. It’s why teenagers adopt such distinct(ly different) clothing styles — so they can all be different together, I guess. I’ve never had any insecurities in this regard — probably because my parents did such a spectacular job of raising all their kids to have a healthy self-esteem, or perhaps because there is something missing in my psyche that ought to provoke the eternal question, “Do I fit in here, do I really belong? When will ‘they’ catch on to me and kick me out?” I joke that “they” are going to take away my feminist card because I am in the epitome of a traditional marriage, or my Texas card because I really and truly do hate to shop, but those are only jokes, and that “they” would take away my magic card that entitles me to anything I set my sights on has never occurred to me.
Even when we lived in Japan, set apart by language, appearance, size, custom, fashion, and probably fifteen other things that I am not even aware of, I never felt the stigma of “other.” Surely myself and my family were as gaijin as we could be. Yet this never bothered me as it did some of my friends. Japanese culture is famously polite and welcoming, and we never sought to be anything other than strangers in a strange land.
Moving to Texas has been harder. I’ve gotten the junior high-esque shoulder a number of times. My mom-friend, a dyed-in-the-wool Texan, kindly explained it to me, “It’s the way you talk, fast, like a New Yorker. It makes them uncomfortable. They can’t help it.” Also, as a stranger-mom I met in the park unkindly said to me, when I explained that I had just moved from Tokyo a month ago and did not know anyone in Dallas, “We all went to school together starting in the same preschool, all through college. Our moms went to school together too.” At that point, I shrugged it off and stopped looking at houses in that neighborhood and started looking in the great neighborhood we live in now. But I never felt stigmatized.
Three years ago, about this time of year, I had just finished chemotherapy, I hadn’t yet had surgery, nor radiation, and I felt kinda okay. It was a gorgeous day, and Chris and I decided to take the kids to the park. After a few minutes, I began to panic, so I told him I was walking home. I didn’t make it. I stopped instead to see my neighbor Nan, a very old lady who is the wisest, kindest, and most direct person I know. I could barely make myself understood, I was crying so hard, but eventually I got the words out, “Everyone at the park was so happy, and normal, and I felt like the fat kid at the beauty pageant.”
“I know, dear,” said Nan. “I’ve felt the same way.”
I stopped crying. “When did you feel like that. You haven’t had cancer.”
“After my husband died.”
“You don’t feel that way any more. How did you get over it?”
“I made myself LIVE. And you will, too,” she said, and fixed me with her EYE. I love Nan.
I remembered this episode last week in chapel. My kids’ awesome school has chapel every Wednesday morning, and every time I go, I remember why I am so glad that we wound up at that school. As usual, a few moms were sitting together chatting including my beautiful friend who has just finished treatment for ovarian cancer. My beautiful friend looked beautiful, as she always does, with makeup and cute clothes and a matching scarf on her head. I should point out that the whole time I was in treatment, and after, until I felt better, I wore old stained sweatshirts and mismatched sweatpants, sunglasses, and a ski cap. No one would ever have called me their beautiful friend. I was about to join my friends when I noticed on the other side a woman whom I like very much, but do not know very well, sitting by herself.
The mom who was sitting alone experienced a family tragedy last year.
I didn’t even think about it. I went and sat next to her. Not out of pity, or sympathy, but because it felt natural to me.
I hope I didn’t intrude. I don’t think I did.
The back yard of our new house is an old creek bed. The creek doesn’t flow through our yard any more because construction upstream blocked it in (damn!) so it trickles into my neighbor’s yard. It would make a swamp, but he dug out a culvert and lined it with stones. It’s quite pretty, except for the plastic flamingoes, and it keeps the mud and mosquitoes out of our yard, so we like it.
Our yard would be quite steep except that the prior owners of our new house, who are among the nicest people we have ever met, built stone terraces in the yard with a stone stair leading from the house to the jungle of vinca and dead trees in the dry creek bed. A friend who was over yesterday for beer and potato chips said that our back yard looks like a Mayan temple which is probably the nicest thing any of our friends has said about our new house. I countered that it looks more like a Ziggurat and he challenged me to write a post about on my blog, which, he pointed out, I have been neglecting. This is the kind of thing I am talking about when I say that my friends are awesome and I do not deserve them.
There are six separate areas of our terraces. The top, next to the house, is what passes for a lawn. Half of it is an almost-finished sunny deck with a pergola overlooking a “lawn” (weeds with dirt) and the creek bed, and the other half is a stone terrace outside our bedroom with some “lawn” (dirt with weeds) and a couple of mature elms perfectly situated to hold a Pawley’s Island Hammock. We just planted a row of Little Gem magnolias along the edge of the top terrace to create a little more privacy on that half of the lawn. The middle terraces are empty except for a composter, raised vegetable garden, and mix of grass and weeds. The bottom terraces, on either side of the stair, each hold a mature elm tree. On the right facing the creek bed, we built a primitive fire pit. I was surprised to discover, after we had closed on the house, that there is, in fact, a bottom left terrace, because it is completely covered in vinca. I’ve been planning to pull it up for over a month.
Today would be the day I tackled the vinca. It rained all day yesterday, and it’s not so hot, so I began pulling it up. If you cannot understand why pulling up weeds is fun for people with cancer then you have no imagination at all and should stop reading this blog and go look at another web site. After a while, or five minutes, I took stock. I had pulled up a huge pile of vinca, and yet barely made a dent. I resolved to stop looking at how much progress I had made until I reached the elm tree in the middle of the terrace.
Right as I reached the elm, Chris came out to check on me, and to help. I had finished my goal, pulling up half the vinca, so I came inside to bandage my hands that were ripped to shreds pulling up weeds, and to write.
The moral of the story is that when they tell you to wear gloves while gardening, you should listen. My hands are covered in bandaids — and in the time it has taken me to take care of my wounds and write this post, Chris, who is wonderful, has finished pulling up the vinca on the rest of the terrace.
If you want to finish a job, you have to start it. That’s the other moral of the story.
Recently, some good friends of ours signed a lease on an apartment of their own after living with family for almost a year. This is great news, and a blessing, and an answer to prayer, and we are so happy for them.
The news spread quickly on facebook, of course, and my friend reported that she had been doing my goofy happy/money dance around.
Now, my happy dance and my money dance are two separate dances.
The money dance is an homage to the character Anya from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It’s a re-creation of her Dance of Capitalist Superiority that she does when closing out the cash register, and I can’t link to it on YouTube because of perfectly valid copyright restrictions, but you can buy, rent, or borrow the DVD and look for it if you are so inclined. I break out the money dance when a short-term investment goes particularly well, or when I’m closing out the cash register at a volunteer gig and it’s a good number, or when I rake in a lot of gold on the Warcraft auction house — not so often any more, since I’m hardly playing WoW at all. I’ll do the money dance when my kids’ classes reach 100% participation in our school’s annual fund drive this fall. The money dance is not about greed (much). It is about recognizing that you need money to do good stuff.
The happy dance makes a rarer appearance. I recently broke it out when we painted our dining room, and the color was good. I did the happy dance about the trees we planted, particularly the huge ginkgo in the front and center of our yard, and I will do the happy dance again when it makes it through fall without producing berries. My kids provoke the happy dance on those rare occasions they get up and dressed for school without drama, and if I ever get around to making plane reservations to go visit my friends in California, New York, Washington, Delaware, Baltimore, Pennsylvania, London, and most especially Switzerland, I will do the happy dance, because I love to travel, and because I have the best friends in the world, and because it will mean that I’m not spending all my travel time and energy and money flying down to Houston for tests every month or two.
A good friend said, “I bet you did the happy dance when they told you you that you were out of the woods, that you should consider yourself cured of cancer, that you only have to go down to MD Anderson once a year.” No. Doing the happy dance over not having cancer any more is like giving Yasser Arafat or John Hume the Nobel Peace Prize for the simple act of ceasing to be an inciter of civil unrest.
I’ll save the happy dance over stuff that makes me happy — like my family becoming functional again, or my friends finally getting a great apartment. For the good stuff. If you want to see the happy dance for not having cancer, then you do it.
I found this old post from my facebook page. I think it is appropriate.
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October 11, 2008
I made popcorn for the kids this afternoon while they watched Muppets Treasure Island. I often make popcorn for the kids to eat while we watch movies at home, which we’ve done a lot of over the past year.
It should surprise no one to learn that I am opposed to microwave popcorn. It tastes bad and smells worse. So when we have popcorn, I dig out the heavy stockpot, heat a little oil, and presto, popcorn. I would drizzle butter over it but (1) I am not eating so much butter lately and (2) the kids do not like it. Plus, greasy fingers… ew. Even without butter, popcorn is pretty good.
Chris’s parents love popcorn. They’re always nuking up a batch. Once, I asked him, since there were no microwaves when we were kids, if his mom used to make popcorn on the stove when he was a kid.
His response, “I vaguely remember the smell of burnt popcorn.”
I realize that this might sound like a slam on my mother-in-law, but it isn’t. Not being able to pop popcorn on the stove is not such a bad thing, and when you look at the things Carol can do compared to the things I can do, the graph looks like this:
Things I can do XXXXXXX
Things she can do XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Therein, perhaps, lies the difference. Carol is incredibly efficient. And it is totally within her personality to be outraged at the huge percentage of kernels that remain unpopped when you do it on the stove, so I am sure she left it on the stove until almost all the kernels were popped. Ergo my husband’s remembrance of the smell of burnt popcorn.
But the thing is, popcorn is really, really cheap, even considering the kernels that refuse to pop. Whereas microwave popcorn, despite the higher pop rate of the kernels, is kind of expensive. And generally speaking, Carol is a much better manager of the household food budget than I am, with my penchant for French jam and tiny organic vegetables. I’m certainly not motivated to make stovetop popcorn to save money.
It’s really about process.
I could make popcorn even at the nadir of my illness. In fact, I think there may have been a week or three when my kids ate … popcorn. I love to make popcorn on the stove. I love the ding of the popping corn hitting the lid of my big pot. I love to lift the lid in order to stir it, it and watch the escapees fly around the kitchen. It cracks the kids up.
I know I could buy a popcorn popper which would solve the problem of unpopped kernels. But really, popcorn is cheap. And I’ve learned to be comfortable with the inefficiency of my methods.
Because life is not about perfection. It’s about enjoyment.
I was reading over this blog. My MUST PURGE EVERYTHING desire took over, and I wanted nothing more than to start over and recraft all the writing and redesign the whole thing — and yet I did not. I’ll probably take it out on my closet later this week — goodness knows, I need to. But this beginning of an online journal, for now, has survived.
I know that not everyone is consumed with the ambition to obtain perfection — and I also know that people who are satisfied with mediocrity are, by many standards, happier, albeit less successful. I have never been one of those people. The stumbling block to my own success has always been that it is Not Good Enough.
I know this blog is new. That it isn’t great. That it has moments where the writing is awkward, or stilted, or too subtle. And yet, I am happy to let it stand, as it is, and go from here and maybe in a month, or year it will actually address the question, “Vici! Vivo! Quid nunc?”* For now, it’s just a slightly narcissistic attempt to use words to make some sense of life. And that, for now, is good enough.
Is this what cancer has taught me?
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I won. I’m alive. Now what? Things sound fancier in Latin.
I wonder if the people reading the first hot-off-the-Gutenberg-press books could have envisioned the ease with we now, half a millennium later, pass along ideas, and I wonder if they could have dreamed of the impact that easy access to other people’s thoughts would have on us.
I think about this thing called the internet, how it creates and sustains a community reaching far beyond what we imagined even twenty years ago.
Do you know why I think about these things? Because my daddy taught me good.
Dance with the Reaper 