Not That We're Counting

Happy anniversary to my daughter, Celeste!  It’s been 12 years today that she’s been in remission from Nodular Sclerosing Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NSHL), Stage IIA, favorable.  In her honor, I hereby present some fun facts and anecdotes from her (mis-)diagnosis period:

Sometime during the summer of 1998, when Celeste was 16, a golf-ball sized lump appeared on her clavicle. One day, a friend jokingly told her to quit messing around with it (she’s a little obsessive-compulsive; no idea who she gets that from) because it was going to turn into cancer.  My daughter’s sense of humor is warped enough that even when she was finally diagnosed in December that year, she remembered the comment and has never let that friend live it down. 

The pediatrician, upon seeing the lump, referred us to a surgeon who took a needle biopsy of the swollen lymph node and pronounced it benign.  He said that it was probably cat-scratch fever, that, in fact, if it wasn’t, he’d eat his hat… and that the node should reduce in size over several weeks.  By late November, it was still enlarged and we returned for a follow-up.  The surgeon said that he could remove the gland, but it wasn’t necessary and besides, she didn’t want a scar that would show when she wore bathing suits and strapless prom gowns, did she?  Dude! This was the wrong thing to say to my daughter.  Yes, as a matter of fact she’d take that scar, with a side of feminism, please. She might have flipped him off.   The biopsy showed cancer and the doctor ate his hat. 

Actually, I don’t think he had a hat and if he did, I’m positive he didn’t eat it. Coward!  Instead, he had his receptionist call me at home and tell me that my daughter had cancer.  I stupidly (blindly, naively?) asked her what I was supposed do.  When she told me to call an oncologist, I had to ask what that was.  Maybe I was in shock?  (Okay, you have no idea how much I wanted to type that whole paragraph in ALL CAPS with a million exclamation marks punctuated with question marks.)

When I went to her bedroom to tell Celeste, who was still home from school recovering from the surgery, she met me at the doorway.  I cried and held her and said the “C” word and swore that if I could, I would make it so that I was the one with the diagnosis.  She hugged me and said, “Mom, that’s stupid; it’s not possible, and you always tell me that I can make a situation a good thing or a bad thing, that it’s my choice.  I’m going to make this a good thing.”  

I found a pediatric oncologist who had made his career on the study and treatment of Hodgkin’s.   We (Celeste's entourage parents, step-parents, grandparents, boyfriends, cats) met with him for the first time on the 4^th of December. One of the first things he said was, “If you’re going to get cancer, this is the kind to get.”  I pondered this for a moment, and then I punched him in the nuts.  Afterwards, I asked politely when "we" could get started on treatment. He suggested that because it was a slow moving cancer that we could wait until after the holidays.  Then Celeste head-butted him and said no, we'll take that opening on the 11^th and sure, we'd be happy to be in his guinea pig in a clinical trial for a “kinder, gentler” treatment.  Could she get a note so she’d get extra credit in AP Bio?

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Okay, I’m going to pause here:  I’m thinking that I could devote several months to fun cancer stories, and it might actually be cathartic for me.  Or else it would cause me to spin in circles, crying and laughing simultaneously, which could be amusing.  Theoretically, I’m writing this for myself, but I’m assuming someone out there is reading this too.  Does anyone have a strong opinion about where I should go with this?  (Teaser:  One story involves stealing radioactive material from a major teaching hospital. Another conjures images of a laboratory-crucifixion.  There's boobs and day-glo orange pee, too.)

P.S.  I started to write this in the form of the five small graces, with numbers and everything, but this post (and actually, the last) wouldn’t be contained that way.  Pretend this is Highlights Magazine and see if you can find the five hidden graces.  Don’t make me number them!

Enlightenment, The Hard Way

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Today I spend some time with my daughter selecting photos for Snake & Butterfly's new chocolate wrappers.  I love collaborating with her artistically (we share an appreciation of photography and literature, in particular). I'm constantly amazed that my baby, this young woman is in my life, that she's someone I'd choose to be a part of my life even if I didn't birth her, that since the day she was born she's challenged me to open and grow and be more of who I am (often whether I liked it or not).

My photos** are my other babies, along with the navel-gazing words I write and the iPhone cozies I knit and the myriad other crafts I dip my fingers into.  My heart and my soul are contained within, and I do not share these lightly. I recognize that I'm just one of a quadrillion photographer wanna-be's, but I also know that if I stop creating, I stop being who I am. So now these works of mine are going to wrap the delectable food that my daughter creates with her hands, and dear god, that is grace.

I spent the better part of my life believing myself to be without an ounce of creativity or artistic talent. Turns out that being on the wrong end of domestic violence can knock that kind of thinking right out of you. I'm not recommending living with a sociopath as a path to enlightenment, but I do like to make sense out what is otherwise nonsense and this is one of the things I learned: Being creative is standard equipment.  We are born with it, we express it always, although we may not recognize it.  When I frame a shot, judge the light, steady my hand and squeeze the trigger, I am allowing myself to be who am, who I was born to be.

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*Note to self: Write these posts earlier in the day, so that you have some time to put three thoughts together cohesively and maybe, even do some cursory editing. Also, get to bed before 5am.  Blogging is not for sissies.

**Those iPhone pitchures from the other day are not my children; they are just some street urchins I picked up back in the '30's when they were a dime-a-dozen.

Summer Solstice

I am so grateful that summer is here at last.  Even on days when the air is so thick with heat that I'm immobilized with lethargy, I am alive, and free from the tulle fog that inhabits my psyche on shorter days.  I can see in color again. This solstice, I have the added blessing of having found my home again, that place where everything feels right with the universe.  

Today my graces take the form of summer fare (shot over the last several days with my iPhone):

1. Miso and sunomono.

2. Cold caffeine, four-legged friend.

3. Cherry Popsicle, blue skies, three palms.

4. A sorbet of a different color.

5. Sprinkles, jimmies, assorted candy.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Photo by Brady Turner, "Subtlety is My Middle Name"

1. Travel plans.  New Orleans, maybe; if not this weekend, then soon.  Alaska.  Hawaii. Italy and Greece. Australia.
2. Going with the flow. Even if it kills me.
3. Hilarious long-distance conversations, several times a day.
4. Face-time, which will have to do for now.
5. Thanks to the universe for getting curiouser and curiouser.  

Forgotten Salad, Take Two

I neglected to relay the best part of the Great Salami Text Incident (see #5).

First, a little background to put this thing into context:  (Not that you asked, but that's okay; I'm used to talking to myself.  I'm not bitter.)  There's this really cool iPhone app called Glympse that allows you to share your live location with anyone you choose, for a given amount of time.  One of the options when you send the Glympse is to attach one of several pre-written messages. I thought it would be fun to share a recent road trip with Brady (that's "first love" from previous post), and hoped he'd do the same on his outrageous 3,300 mile commute. Nothing quite compares to legally stalking an ex-boyfriend.

So, as I mentioned before, it's as if no time whatsoever has passed since we last saw each other.  Our sophomoric humor and love for gadgets knows not the bounds of time. He jumped all over the opportunity to download a new app, and planned a creative, if not romantic use for it.  On the second layover of his trip, he prepared and sent a Glympse, which included the canned message:  "I forgot the salad, but I am bringing the salami." Subtle, right?

The thing is, I didn't receive that Glympse.  Instead, I received a phone call from an airport in the Midwest and all I heard when I picked up was uncontrollable giggling. Turns out that in his haste to hit "send", he pulled up the name in his address book that was closest to mine alphabetically.  Male name.  I'm guessing Del had a giggle of his own.  Or else he blocked Brady on his phone.Fortunately for me and my reader(s?), he managed to send the message to me on his second try. 

If you think that story is hilarious (and really, who wouldn't), remind me to tell you about the Not Quite as Funny, but Pretty Cute Emoji HD App Incident.

I Forgot the Salad

It's late and I'm lazy, (but grateful!) so back to the original intent and format of this blog. Small graces, five.

1. New paint on the house and deck, new shingles on the sheds.  The colors are very Zen to my eye and their names thrill my word-nerd self:  Saturn Grey (really a soft mossy green), Black Swan (a deep, deep forest green, quite mysterious), Pillar White, & Ivy Topiary.  I would love a job naming colors for paint!  I hear that pays really well.
2. Eating marigolds on the deck with the kids; crushing mint between my fingers.
3. Erica's blog post, which she wrote in response to an old photo I uploaded to Facebook yesterday.  I was moved to tears.  
4. Ridiculous discussions with the kids, which included Renzo telling me that he was "born with it" and shrugging as if to say, ummm, duh! when I asked him who gave him the new baseball glove. At bedtime, Parker attempted some ill-fated logic, first insisting on sleeping on the floor in Renzo's futon, then demanding her place back in my bed because, "there's not enough light on the floor."  At least she had the grace to laugh at her own absurdity when I called her on it.
5. "I forgot the salad, but I remembered the salami."  Text from my first love (found after forever, no time whatsoever has elapsed) while en-route from his home to his job 3,300 miles south (!). I live nowhere near either place.  I'm assuming he'll deliver the salami in person soon. Salami jokes are ALWAYS funny.

Ad Nauseam

I'm back.  I'm not even going to try to justify my absence to my one reader.   

I did, however, over-analyze my failings in the blogger arena. The result of that self-flagellation is a working theory, as follows:  There are bloggers and there are not-bloggers.  Some bloggers are just born this way, others make it a calling, still others happen into it and wake up one day with 75.33 posts (more research needed in this area) and realize they are a converted not-a-blogger.  In any case,you can't sit on the fence, or rather, you can, but if you do, you fall off into not-a-blogger territory.  I, at my very best, back when I started my first blog, sat on that damn fence and fell again and again. I thought of my blogs as online journals that I could (and did) burn as soon as I got afraid.  (More on fear, probably ad nauseam, later.  Ooooh, great blog name!  Or, metal band.  I feel another theory coming on.)

For a week or so now, ever since Eden posted some excerpts from our email correspondence, I've been trying to come up with a post worthy of my latest title: Eden's Motherfuckin' Bitch TM.  (Prior to that, I was known far and wide as The Empress, but that's another post and another acknowledgement: remind me.) Turns out that kind of self-imposed pressure creates  a massive case of writer's* block. 


To my new readers: welcome, thank you, and I told you so.