Showing posts with label futurerama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label futurerama. Show all posts

Monday, October 27, 2014

Flying

For Lara, who has taught me so much about the wheel and for Sharleen, who is that determined kid who will get it.
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Round and round, death defying pace, toes scraping trenches into hardscrabble earth, someone jumps off and grabs the rust-flecked metal and starts running again, propelling the welded frame around its axis faster and faster. Sweaty, grubby hands just barely hanging on in the Oklahoma heat. Older kids with wide open faces, laughing and smiling. Younger kids clinging with terror in their eyes, trying to be cool. Flicker of kid and kid and kid and kid and kid and that open seat you are aiming for --missed it-- and kid and kid and kid and kid and--jump to it, bump off, land on your ass in the dirt as your friends howl and another kid pops off to pump the merry-go-round faster and faster. Determined, you pace it again ---kid, kid, kid, kid, kid-- bam! lucky enough to get the seat next to the frame so you can pull your skinny self up and onto the smooth-worn wood and lean out and away into the abyss of flying. 

You are not a brave kid, nor have you ever been, but you feel compelled by the sense of freedom that you believe you'll experience when you are on, through the false starts and times you've had to dart back from flinging legs and uneven ground, muster courage, learn about the pace and the rhythm and the movement before stepping back in, running alongside, hoisting yourself on with whatever strength you have, hoping that you can catch the ride before it starts up again at maximum speed. 

Years later when this metaphor comes back to you in the 5am scratching of pen on paper, you wonder what it meant to you to try, to keep at it, to land on the hardpack ground a few times, to risk. Did you even think about it? Probably not. More likely it was the possibility of movement and sound, your vestibular system afire with sensation, the action not singular but communal, your body used to meeting the dirt and the ground with so much more frequency than you would know in your adult years. And a shorter distance to fall. And less jarring.

So it's there again, that seat that flickers in front of you, the one that you know you have moments to seize before it's taken by another. Think not of the smell of metal on your skin and the ache of your wrists from leaning too far forward. Think instead of the hot wind on your face, the thrill in your stomach as you lean into space, of the excited shrieks of the people around you, of flying, of freedom, of joy and the the reward of having taken that leap.








Sunday, October 23, 2011

What Comes Next

I have been thinking a lot about what comes next. Obsessing, a little. Five weeks left of treatment.

Five more times in the chair.

I keep envisioning that last day. What will it be like? Will I cry when it's over? Will I laugh or clap my hands or do a little dance? I don't think I can do any of those things as there are people far sicker than I sharing that space, sitting in their own chairs, clinging to hope and working through whatever musters them to be there. That would be rude, wouldn't it, to celebrate end of this leg of the journey when others have so much more to face? But I can't imagine how I will feel at the end of this very long run. When I think of it, tears spring to my eyes.

It will have been twenty four weeks that I will have been in chemotherapy treatment. Nearly six months of my life. Nearly a marathon. In some ways I feel like I am going to be the guy whose body shuts down on the last leg, cratering under the exhaustion and stress from the experience. In others, I feel like I will finish at the end with my chest out, arms held high. Who is to know until I get there. I'm not tempting the Fates again with too much advanced thinking.

But this leads me to the next thing (ah HA FATES). What comes next? How will I know if I have cancer again? I asked my nurse practitioner the other day and she said "well, we look for signs and symptoms." Signs and symptoms? That's all? We get to wait until things are far enough along that I really start to notice that something is up? What about tests? What about some sort of imaging? Wait and see? What the hell?

A few weeks ago, Ava and I were standing in a local bagel shop behind another woman and her daughter. This gal had the telltale bald head so I looked over at Ava and said "See, this lady has no hair just like mom!" The woman and I struck up a conversation and she asked "Is this your first time with breast cancer?" I must have looked a little shocked as I said "uh, my first" because she said, kind of softly, "oh, it's my second. I mean, I had a good ten years in between..." and her voice kind of trailed off. I looked from her beautiful daughter who must have been only 18 to my beautiful daughter who would only be 15 if I had ten years and my blood ran cold.

Ten years.

Being this close to the end also makes me realize that I don't know if I can go through this again. I know I will if I have to because I love my children and my husband and my people and don't want to leave them, but the thought of going through this again just is kind of beyond me.

I know it's hard for my friends who are surviving breast cancer to read this blog because it brings back too much stuff. I have an acquaintance on FB who is struggling through recurrence now. This is the part that I didn't want to think about. This is the part, near enough but far enough away, that scares me.

Ten years.

If I could be so lucky? Is that the way to be thinking about this?

Maybe it will mean I will live my life better, differently. Maybe I will make better choices with my time, think about the future in shorter chunks, not waste energy on situations and irritants that do nothing to fill my bucket. Maybe thinking in terms of ten years would be a blessing.

But ten years is not enough time to do the things I want to do with my life. I have plans, people. I have things to see, I have trips to take, I have communities to build, I have people to love, I have kids to marry off, I have grand babies to hold, I have a retirement home in Seattle to buy...I have plans.

So what comes next? What do you see for me?