A shot at redemption

T-10 days until I board a plane for Miami, dragging my pale skin and winter-worn smile to bask in the light of warm weather and friendship. This is no ordinary trip, but a reunion tour with one of my oldest and most important friends. Yes, this is the friend of my heart that I haven't seen or spoken to in years. Yes, we have been in contact.

In weird ways, it's as though things never changed, that the five years we spent out of each other's lives simply erased when we met at the glass door of her apartment building in Seattle. All of the sadness, hurt, bewilderment and anger that I think we both felt got crowded out by a feeling of coming home. She looks the same, has more gorgeous children, her sweet and hilarious husband is the wonderful guy I was friends with for years. We sat and drank mimosas and talked for hours before they packed up to go be Seattle's 12th man.

And this has all made me realize that I hate things that are unfinished. I used to think that the best/worst thing I could do at the end of a friendship or relationship was just to simply remove myself from the other person's world. But the truth is that it's painful, these unfinished things. It's harder to lose someone to living than to dying. Bereavement is different when what you have lost is walking around in the world.

The hardest thing to tease out is what keeps you from taking the plunge of reconnecting. Mostly it's pride, I think. At least that's what kept me from my friend for years. Pride and not wanting to be the first to extend the olive branch. That and the very real likelihood that things had changed so radically that it would never be the same. Or, like in so many other situations, it can't or shouldn't be the same. It's something impossible to know. It's only by making yourself vulnerable and by understanding what you are trying to resolve in your own heart that you will get to what you need.

Sunshine, cuban food, so many memories at the ready. Wish us luck.

They Gather Their Courage and They Give It a Try

You can’t buy a simple pad of paper in the New Orleans airport. Paper as it exists here is either the kind of list pad that has “hot & spicy!” or “Jazz!” written at the top, or comes in the form of a lined journal with biblical quotes at the bottom of every page. So I’m destined to write this post with my thumbs. Maybe God is telling me I should have gone with the journal.

Another door closes today as my treatment in New Orleans comes to a end with the embellishment done by a guy named Vinnie from Baltimore who has a penchant for beautifully made hats. We talked about home tattooing and PCP trips and stories about his youth as he tattooed my tits. Tittats. Tittats™ could be a great marketing schtick except that Vinnie is known as the Michelangelo of areola tattoos and needs no marketing help. Vinnie, who is incredibly cool and lovely to talk to, is flying to Memphis to check out a hat store tomorrow. Tittat™ business is good when you are talented. Thank God for the likes of Vinnie. Maybe there is a bible verse for that in one of those little lined journals.

I’m feeling all sorts of sassy and consternated here in New Orleans, gathering all of my memories to tally them up and close them out in a last-chapter roll finale my experience here. It’s humorous that I went from flashing my tits in this fair city to getting flash-worthy tits in this fair city. That’s something I’ll put in the thank-you note to Vinnie who tells PCP stories but not likely to my drs who might find my tit-talk a little off-putting, a tidbit I gleaned not only from their demeanor but also from the Romans 5:1-5 quote in my parting gift. And so it rolls.

There are things that wrap with this trip. Now the next four years stretches out before me as I am done fiddling with things. I have to put all of this fiddling aside and live in the present because being in the space of still having medical things to distract me is over. I have to dig in and realign where I am. I have to settle into the reality of now. On the way back to the airport today, I listened to my cab driver speak about his life. He poured out his story, this man, about his daughter who had cancer, about his wife who was depressed for losing her mother a year ago, about the spot they found on his lung that he’s not sure what it is. And all the while he holds out hope, this man who had lost his restaurant to the hurricane and who was driving a cab even though he was proud to mention that he had a college education. This man who came from Iran and was delighted to tell me that the Persians prefer butter to olive oil in their cooking. He told me about Jesus and hope and his confidence that I would be fine. “Eat oregano and garlic and onions!” he said. “I believe you will be well!” he shouted as he craned his neck out the window. “And Jesus! Don’t forget Jesus!”

I’m eating blueberry granola on the plane and wondering if there is really gin in my G&T. I’m winging my way back to Michigan, leaving all of this behind. I’m flying without net. I’m flying onto what is next. I’m flying.

Frank. True. Honest. Real.

I wrote this post about a month or so ago, right on the heels of the dream I described. In that time I had begun to believe that the things I was writing here were too goddamn depressing, that there was no joy in anything I had to say, that people didn't want to read shit that made them cry.

Which lead to me not posting. Which meant that I wasn't being true to myself.

And then I got an email from my friend Lara last night, a long-ago woman with whom I shared a voyage around the world that will forever be imprinted on my mind. Lara is a kick-ass woman and kicked me in the ass to post again. Because Lara is not afraid of scary things. She's not one to need to mark of sunshine and optimism on everything. She just deals with things as they are. At least this is what I remember of her,  and loved about her, those many years ago.

So here we go again. Some things not so lovely, some things will be. It is what it is.
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Every once in awhile, there is a dream so vivid and real that I can't erase it from my eyes. Stark-still morning leaves me reliving the flashes and images that the soup of my brain has created the night before: some delicious and gorgeous and sensual and beautiful; others deep and lasting and disturbing and filled with resonant worry. Last night was one of those nights, delivering to me the dream that I've pushed off and aside for the past three years.

I can remember the colors in the dream, deep sapphire blue, lime-emerald green, white...all outlined in a contrasted black...and the incredible realness of what was going on. Frank. True. Honest. Real. Sitting in this dream, watching it unfold, participating in the scene, I believed that it was really happening.

That's because it can. And might. Which is what I thought of in my dappled-sunlight morning, swaddled deep in the sheets, unwilling to peek open to the new day.

It was the first dream I've ever had about getting cancer again, a recurrence which is pretty much a death sentence in the triple-negative world. See, I've never checked the stats, never typed "likelihood of survival after recurrence triple negative breast cancer" into the google jackpot to learn about my fate. My sister mentioned it once, the likelihood that I wouldn't survive another bout, but I plugged my ears and danced around until that voice in my head was gone.

But this dream was the real deal, it was sitting in the hospital getting the news, it was the reality that I was going to die, not a question of if, but when. Fuck. So real, so very real that I did type in those words and my sister was right. Likelihood of recurrence? Much, much higher than other hormone-receptive breast cancers. Survival rate after recurrence? 10%. Survival time? Average of nine months. Nine. Months.

I can't begin to understand what it means to die from breast cancer. My mind goes into overdrive trying to picture it in my head, what it would look like and comparing it to my mother's death from lung cancer. What happens? How do you die? What happens to your body? Who are you in that space? And in nine months? Nine months...on average?

I've lived the past two years in a daze, half denying that I ever had breast cancer, half denying that it can or will come back. It's comfortable, this denial, until you are lying in your warm bed completely awash in the reality that you very well may. fucking. die.

Die.

That something fundamental has happened in your life that threatens your existence in a way that you can't resolve. That you may be that life cut short that people cluck their tongues and shake their heads about. That all of your bravado and feeling good and pushing past the looks of people who know your story may be total bullshit because you may get this again and have to make decisions that are horrible all to extend your life by months...months, not years.

I suspect this reality check is something that every woman who gets breast cancer goes through. I know friends who have had recurrences who are there and are winning. I know few people who have died from this disease. But I have watched my friends and loved ones waste away from cancer. I have watched the bizarre deceleration and crippling otherness of an otherwise vibrant life.

Honestly, this reality is too much for me to handle. It's bankrupt. It's the end of the road. It's the edge of the universe. I can't wrap my head about what it would mean. And I want to believe it won't happen to me. But I'm not that arrogant and I am just that pessimistic.

So how do you live when that veil has been lifted? Does it change anything? Is it just roulette? Isn't there some huge life revelation that I am supposed to get from "holy fuck, I really may die?"

All I can keep with me is the blue and green of the scene, of the movement of people through the film in my brain, of the feeling of reckoning that stayed with me in the dream and beyond.

Final. It is what it is. No way around it. Real.

I wish there was some big pledge at the end of this post, something that would tell everyone that this was going to be ALL RIGHT and that things will be fine. But I am just going to sit with this reality for a bit because I need to, it's been too long that I've pushed it away.

Lush with Potential

Thick dark pens, rows of them lined up according to fine or broad stroke, to color, to permanence. Rulers, lots of them, and watercolors and colored pencils the likes of which my aunt used to ferry back and forth from Europe to delight me as a child. White paper, tracing paper, rough sketch paper bound up in books for one's pocket. Tools for the hands, making visible ways of seeing with eyes that are fresh and new, untrained and excited, quiet.

I remember watching Nick build his store of art supplies for his foray into the study of landscape architecture. I was envious of his haul, of the boxes that would arrive daily from Dick Blick, reminding me of my highschool years where I would buy paint tubes upon pens upon sketch books just simply to have them nearby. I was never an actual artist, my fear of muddling the page or of looking foolish thwarting any desire I had to create something beautiful and meaningful. So the supplies sat on the shelf until they dried up or were given away. I watched in those months as Nick's natural talent emerged, his careful hand and attention to detail producing draft upon draft of spaces rich with meaning and lush with potential.

This Fall I begin a program of making, in a sense, having been accepted to a Masters in Design Methods program that will take me every other weekend to Chicago. I'm nervous, having been on my back foot for the past few months doing work that is not my strong suit and looking to a future where I have to take the pen to the page to create in a way beyond words.

The months leading up to this program are also a study in stillness, of seeing, of quiet, of reflection and introspection and all of those things you don't get to do when you are caught up in family and life and clutter and the distance that can separate you from your true self. I have been given the gift of time and space to sort things out. I have been given the opportunity to peel back through some blank pages and search for the words written in invisible ink underneath. It's beautiful and weird and heartbreakingly thanks-giving at the same time. I am awash in tears at the generosity of it all.