Losing My Cool Via Email

A strange thing happened to me today: I lost my cool.  And I lost it over an email. Four emails to be exact.

This woman, a complete stranger, called me up and read me the riot act about not returning an email.  You see, I used to host a writer's group in Hilo, a free workshop to express creativity in the community and company of others.  Because we know writing can be a lovely, yet lonely pursuit. So this woman had been trying to get a hold of me for a few days, and I was remiss in my response.  Somehow she found my phone number and rang me up with a "Miss Manners" lesson poised on the tip of her tongue.  

The mostly one-sided conversation that followed was so intense, so unexpected and strange, that I stood on my front lanai, still and unmoving as a day without tradewinds.  I stood and watched a small green lizard hop from one red ginger blossom to another, nabbing ants as they marched up a dry and peeling stalk.  A neighbor walked past with Peanut, the pudgiest beagle in Hilo.  Afternoon constitution. She waved, my neighbor. But I couldn't. I just stood there stupidly on my front lanai, completely speechless, while a disembodied voice chewed me up one side and down the other.  Then I remembered myself.  I made short our conversation and hung up. But before I did, I told the woman on the phone that I would return her email. 

 <<insert string of expletives here>>    

My phone conversation with the ethereal conscience of Emily Post has been simmering on low heat all day. I tried to read past it (Chinua Achebe, in honor of his recent passing.)  I tried to nap through it. (Couldn't sleep.)  I even tried to appease it with one large glass of wine.  (That didn't help either.)  I don't know why this is bothering me so much.  It shouldn't, right?  My annoyance and outrage probably has nothing to do with this woman I described to a friend as a "freakshow, wackjob, nutwing, asshat of a woman."  Witch alert!  Double, double, toil and trouble.  My cauldron runneth over.     

So what, then?  Instinctively I shrug my shoulders, even though I know the answer. 

I felt... broken.  On the phone, via email, in general.  I still feel broken after all these months.  What's more, my brokenness was exposed to a complete stranger, and she responded in such a rude, insensitive manner.  I know, I shouldn't expect others to understand.  I shouldn't, but...  I did.  I needed someone, in that odd moment, to understand my pain.    

There I was, watching Peanut green the neighbor's lawn, feeling no air in my lungs.  The woman on the phone was incensed, personally affronted that I hadn't returned her emails (4 of them, 3 to yahoo and one to FB), but had "free time enough to post to Facebook several times each day." She's not even a "friend" of mine on Facebook. How could she see my posts?  Just a bit creepy. 

Her first email was late, late Wednesday night, as in a few days ago. And it wasn't like "Hey, help me find a missing child," --or-- "I'm bleeding out. Do you know how to make a tourniquet?" It was something I thought I could respond to tomorrow. I mean, I just finished my last class today, collected the midterm essays, took them home and graded about half of them. And I haven't showered. That part is solid truth-telling.

So, here's what I sent her. I told her I would respond to her via email. Here's what I just sent:

-------------

Hello [full name of angry person],

I'm responding to your phone call and must say that I was frustrated and distressed after I hung up. I tried to talk to you today, but you seemed more interested in reading me the riot act about not returning your emails. I told you I would reply via email (in truth because I was being polite and didn't want to yell), so here it is: The past two years of my life have been a living hell. I assure you, this is no hyperbole. My daughter was diagnosed with bone cancer, and three days later we left the state for treatment. I quit my whole stinking life overnight: graduate school midway through a PhD, my job, my house, my pets, my community. It's hard to describe the devastation, other than to say it's like an evisceration. Body, mind, and spirit, my life has been torn up, turned upside-down and inside-out. So, really? REALLY? Over four freaking emails, all sent this week?

I'm sorry, [full name], if I didn't return your call in what you consider a timely manner. I'm sorry that when friends packed up my house, the software to update the Wild Mind website was misplaced. I'm sorry I've had my mind on just a few hundred thousand billion other things, aside from the free writing group I used to host. Believe me, it would be great--super fantastic, actually--if that's all I had to worry about. I'm sorry that you went down to the gallery and that we weren't there. I'm sorry you were quite put out. I am sorry about that, actually. I'm also sorry that this week is midterms at the college and that I'm teaching five classes to help pay down the mountain of medical bills that arrive each day in our mailbox, and I'm sorry that I've been grading my ass off for days and days and nights and days. In fact, I've been so stressed and busy this week, I can't rightly remember when I last showered. And I'm especially sorry that I go on Facebook as a means to relax and connect with family, friends near and far, and the cancer community. You must be so disappointed in me.

Oh wait a minute... I don't even know you. I really don't need to explain myself, do I? I'll do it anyway.

Imagine my surprise when I received your call today, complaining that I hadn't returned your email from this week. I mean, you probably don't know that I have 22,027 unopened emails in my email account right now. That's what happens, [full name], when you take almost two years away from your life, when you live away from home and out of a suitcase at the freaking Ronald McDonald House, when you think about nothing else but whether your child will live or die. Yeah. I'm a little behind on email.

I'm sorry if this email is a bit terse, verging on rude and inappropriate. It's not like me, but I'm not feeling much like myself. You see, I'm tired and grumpy. I'm thinking about what will happen in two weeks when we fly to Seattle for scans and medical appointments. It's called scanxiety, wondering whether the cancer in my daughter has relapsed or not. And we have to do this every three months, [full name]. Every three months. Every. Three. Months. And I worry about it much more than that. So maybe you can just give me a stinking break for not returning your email, for not updating my website, for not being a perfect human being in a screwed up situation.

Perhaps you've just caught me on a more-than-blue-moon kind of day. Everyone has their breaking point, right? My breaking point came today, after I felt I needed to defend myself on the phone to a complete stranger about why I haven't returned her email when I haven't even responded to emails from my own family. Yeah, I'm a little tired. I'm depressed. I'm over-freaking-whelmed.

And then I had this crazy, crazy thought. You know what? I don't need to offer any excuses. I don't need to defend myself, the way I live, the person I am, or how I spend my time.

I don't make excuses for who I am, [full name]. I don't need to. Not to you or anyone else.

Please do not call me again.

Piper Selden

---------

 I felt like screaming at this woman. If you don't like me, then bug off! Or as my grandmother used to say: "Peddle your papers elsewhere." I'm not buying nuts today. 

Who is this person I've become?  There are days I don't recognize myself, and I have no patience for it. My inner diplomat has gone missing. But maybe it's relative. I didn't yell, and I didn't swear at her. What I can say is this: If she'd been in front of me, I would have stared at her incredulously, stared deep into her eyes, then I would have vomited on her feet. That's the way I lose my cool for real.   

As the late Chinua Achebe writes in Things Fall Apart, a story that captures the depth of shared human qualities: "There is no story that is not true." 

And so it goes, when things do...

Wishing Moon

A waning crescent moon

Step outside tonight, if the heavens are clear, and gaze up at slim crescent smiling down at you.  This fingernail in the sky shows that that the moon lies at least forty-five degrees behind the sun.  Also known as the “balsamic moon,” the sliver you do see is in the final lunar phase before the new moon tomorrow; it signals a time of rest and rejuvenation.  I need this moon.

Seven months.  It’s been seven months since we left Seattle and our year of cancer.  My sun-loving body rhythms haven’t yet returned, or maybe the anxiety that my daughter’s cancer will come back still haunts me at night.  Specters like these aren’t daytime creatures.  Regardless, I’ve made peace with my nighttime wakefulness and spend a lot of time staring upward, at the darkened ceiling that lives above the clouds.  At one time, I could identify only the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, and the moon.  Today I count the constellations above me as a seasonal map and new way to mark time. 

Although I’ve always been a night owl and admirer of the moon, it’s never before felt like such a kind companion. A marvelous, mysterious thing, the moon is tied to sea currents and ocean tides, to ancient planting rituals, and seafaring explorers.  I’ve also found she’s an exceptional listener.  When I feel desperate or disheartened, night darkness wraps its arms around me, providing the kind of intimate shelter I need sometimes to cry, howl, or whimper.  But it’s the moon’s glow--nature’s nightlight--that keeps me from wallowing too deeply.  Just a few minutes of moonbathing is restorative and keeps monkey-mind chatter at bay.  I can shut out the worry for a short time, shelve my anxiety, feel the peace and calm of a quiet house.  Eyes skyward, the changing face of my moon friend assures me that life moves on, even if I feel stuck.  

Acupuncturists mark time differently, with pins and meridians.  During a recent “poking session” with my favorite healer, I learned about the Horary Clock.  I’d heard of it from Jan before because when making appointments, she sometimes pipes up, “Oh, good.  That’s heart hour,” or spleen or stomach.  The Horary Clock is a 24 hour clock that relates to energy pathways (meridians) and body systems.  

My interest in this energy clock has to do with an answer or explanation for my “wee bitty hour” situation: each night I wake up around the same time.  3:00 a.m., to be exact.  Sometimes I can go back to sleep, most nights I can’t.  For this purpose, I put a chair on the back lanai so that when the squirrels inside my brain won’t settle down or an anxiety attack sets in, I can go somewhere to sit and watch the stars.  The interesting thing I learned about the Horary Clock and my wee bitty waking hour is that 3:00 a.m. is the switchover time.  It’s when the old energy cycle ends and a new one begins, a little like the balsamic and new moon phases.  The old moon dies away in preparation for a new one.  

It’s a strange, liminal place of dying and resurrection.  A bit like New Year’s Eve at 11:50 p.m., it’s almost over but there is time to endure.                               

The human body is tuned into cycles of the moon.  As the old moon wanes, many people experience a physical dip in energy.  Strangely, as the physical dips, the mental peaks.  The right brain processes—expressive, creative, intuitive—peak as the moon shrinks. During this time of darkness, the moon rises before the dawn, when most of us are sound asleep and lost in a world of our own making.  Most of us. 

  

Each month I feel a pull from the dark, new moon.  While the rational part of my brain knows how important it is to rest during the balsamic phase, the creative fire in me pushes against my body.  Days and nights mix, a dreamlike mind set ablaze.  I take note because for me, the veil between the conscious and subconscious thins each month as the night sky darkens.  Time and space tango in an ecstatic dance of spirit, intention, and manifestation.  Poems come to me, ideas for short stories, plans for herb gardens, countries to visit.  I sort and purge memories, shaping and reshaping reality as I go.  What are my hopes, my dreams for the upcoming month?  In many ways, the balsamic moon is a dreaming or wishing moon.

Tonight is the last of the old moon.  The waning crescent is 29 days old and 365,791 km. away from the earth, and it is less than 1% illuminated.  What are my hopes for the next few days?  What are my fears at 3:00 a.m. when the Horary Clock strikes the change?  Immediate thoughts move to my daughter’s upcoming cancer scans.  My hope is that they are clean.  Clean as they can be.  I hope the spots on her lungs have not changed in size, that the bloodwork shows nothing of interest.  For next Wednesday, I hope that the hands of her surgeon are steady and sure.  I hope that my daughter sails through the operation with the strength of a young moon as it builds momentum and brightness in the night sky.  My wishing moon has a lot hanging on it tonight. 

DragonSlayers

Lauren and Piper: DragonSlayers in Slippas

Beauty radiates.

Lauren and Todd

This shows that playful side I love so much.

Lauren and Theo

Yes, typical siblings.

Quiet moments

With my favorite girl.

Magic Wands and Squeaky Wheels

Did you know there are angels among us?  That’s right--in disguise, magic wands in hand.  Last year I was honored to meet one of those wand wielding angels by way of her introduction as Lauren’s Seattle-area “Wish Granter” for the Make-A-Wish organization.

If you’re not familiar with Make-A-Wish, let me nutshell it this way: The organization bestows smiles to young people who need it most.  M-A-W is the largest wish granting organization of its kind.  From their website: "Since 1980, the Make-A-Wish Foundation® has given hope, strength and joy to children with life-threatening medical conditions."  Wish Granters operate on behalf of the company as fairy godmothers and godfathers to critically ill children and kids who have fought a life-threatening illness.

And although we’re back home in Hawaii, Lauren’s first Wish Granter continues to stretch that sparkly wand across the waves to spread her special kindness.  Audrey doesn’t need to do this, but she does anyway.  You see, when we moved back to Hawaii, Lauren was transferred from Washington to Hawaii Make-A-Wish.  Not even angels can escape bureaucratic red tape.
   
A few days ago I received a short but sweet “just checking in” email from our Seattle M-A-W Wish Granter.  She asked about Lauren and whether she had picked her wish yet.  She signed it, “With love to you all.”  After reading the email twice, I closed down my computer.  I sat on the back lanai of my mother's house, taking sunshine into my body like oxygen.  When I was noticed an ever increasing tightness in my chest, I focused on my breath, as my acupuncturist has suggested.  I listened to the noisy community of birds who have made the garden oasis on Hoopuni Street a favorite gathering spot.  I tried not to think about Audrey and Make-A-Wish.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t Audrey.  It was me, stewing a simmering pot of pissed off on the back burner of my conscientiousness.  Anger.  Sadness.  Frustration.  I avoided Audrey’s email for three whole hours before I felt like my head would explode from the pressure.  And so, I responded.  Please forgive my weakness, friend, wherever you are reading this.  How can I fully express the feebleness of my heart?  I exposed the wounded, self-pitying, toddler-tantrumming bits of my spirit via email.  What kind of person does that?

My embarrassing response to the lovely, fairy-dust-spreading Audrey:

Miss you, Audrey.  Miss you.

It appears that we've moved to Make-A-Wish wasteland.  Nothing here. No presence at all.  Well, I guess that isn't "technically" true: We get sporatic bulk flyers that tease us with Oahu-only events.  :(

I think it makes Lauren more than a little sad. MY wish, Audrey, is that we could have done her wish there.  You guys took such good and kind care of us.  *sigh

You know, I just had a feeling this would happen. If you don't live on Oahu in Hawaii, you are pretty much invisible.  Doesn't matter that you're a girl who survived cancer or not.  Completely invisible.

Makes me want to cry.

--Piper
Mom to Warrior Princess Lauren


I hit send before I could chicken out, then checked my inbox.  There was already a response.  Impossible!  Actually, it was a follow-up to her original email.  How odd that somewhere in the greater Seattle area, Audrey had been thinking of us at the same time I was thinking of her.  What are the chances? I wondered.  With this question in mind, I felt compelled to send another email, if nothing but an attempt to better share my feelings.

Hi Audrey,

I'm sorry that I'm venting to you. I'm just sad and frustrated.  This Oahu-centric treatment isn't limited to Make-A-Wish.  It's just that I watched Lauren struggle last year.  To say she fought (and continue to fight - she still has spots on her lungs) for her life with that golden wish in mind... There were days and weeks and months that M-A-W was the thing that got her through. When she was too weak from the surgeries or chemo or infections, when she felt her lowest, we'd talk about her wish. Together we would close our eyes and imagine the rides at Disney World. I would describe scenes as vividly as I could, from memory, to enhance our visualizations: swash-bucklers and stashes of treasure in Pirates of the Caribbean, the musical wonder of the "Laughing Place" at Splash Mountain, an exhilarating zip through a universe of stars at Space Mountain.  We spent hours and hours imagining her wish.  It was her safe place to go when everything else fell apart.  And you folks made her feel special, kept that wish on a front burner, visited us, and brought smile to her face.

And I don't think I ever expressed to you how much I appreciated you both.  Please let me do that now.  Thank you!

So, here's one of the flyers we have received from M-A-W Hawaii.  No greeting, no context. And you know what? I don't even tell Lauren that these come.  It's kinda like: "Hey, Lauren!  Look at this really cool thing we can't do!  Aren't those M-A-W families on Oahu lucky?"

Love, light, and aloha from our family to yours,

Piper

Forwarded with my email to Audrey was an electronic flyer I had received about an Oahu-only event.  Truth be told: I felt lighter after sending the email.  The gnawing irritation had dissipated somewhat.  There seemed to be more room in my chest.  Physically, I felt lighter. The Make-A-Wish confessional diet.    

About 20 minutes later, my phone rang.  It was a Hawaii number.  In fact, the caller was a representative from Make-A-Wish Hawaii.  Greetings.  Introductions.  A little bit about the M-A-W program in Hawaii.  Apologies.  You see, Todd had contacted the organization upon our arrival back home.  His call coincided with an annual fundraiser.  Busy times. We’ll get back to you.  I sent an email inquiry in January with Lauren’s information, our address, and a request for a meeting.  We were placed on an email distribution list and started to receive exciting notices for Oahu-only events.  Grumble, grumble, stirring that pot of pissed off Momcologist stew.

Now this: We’re finally setting up a meeting with the Hawaii folks to talk about Lauren’s wish.  Audrey also sent a reply, a short little love note along with suggestions for fun things we might do for the next scan visit in January.  With her magic wand, Audrey includes us as extended members of the Seattle Wish Family:

You are forever in our hearts.  Let’s see if I can make something more tangible happen. 

Hugs to the Warrior Mom ,
A.

It’s not my intention to bash any part of the Make-A-Wish organization. And the “Pity Party, Table for One” emails I sent Audrey are something I wanted to make public, awkward and humiliating as they are.  I’m willing to be an ass because I know Lauren wouldn’t do it for herself.  Please don't think less of me for it.  As her mother and advocate, I’ll take that bullet for her again and again.  I know her dad would do the same.  Something about squeaky wheels.

 

Selective Memory

I remember writing that my daughter was NED (no evidence of disease) and that my husband kindly, gently corrected me.  The thing is, Lauren does have spots on her lungs, which is a type of evidence.  So then, what is she?  SED?  Some evidence of disease? UED?  Unchanged evidence?  The spots on her lungs have not changed much in the 6 months we’ve known about them.  Is this a good thing?  To me it doesn’t feel good.  It feels like an uncomfortable spot in my gut. It feels like good news that doesn’t feel 100% sincere. And now that scans are over and we’ve been given as close to a “thumbs up” as we’re likely to get, it feels like relaxation.  Kind of.

This feeling of tension, this knot that refuses to unwind no matter how much or how often I contort myself, is like trying to relax in a room with a ticking bomb.  But the timer on this bomb is hidden from me.  We don’t know if or when it will go off.  We try not to think about it.  Ha!

I remember writing NED on this blog.  I remember a feeling of elation and relief mixed with sadness about our friends who didn’t receive elation-type news.  I remember thinking I heard NED, but really I didn’t.  I remember hearing what I wanted to hear.  

Cookies and Community

"Keep reading" teaser from Yummy Cafe

A Good Fortune... but first the muck.

Yesterday was "scan day," a terrifying, post-treatment variant of  what we lovingly refer to in our house as Torture Tuesday.  Lauren was diagnosed with bone cancer, Ewing's Sarcoma in her left distal femur.  In mid-July, 2011, we learned that she had a tumor inside her leg, right in the thigh bone, a little north of her knee.  We flew to Oahu where the initial diagnosis was confirmed.  Upon hearing that the one specialist who might best help our daughter was on vacation for three weeks, my daughter and I boarded a plane for Seattle Children's Hospital, not knowing when we would return to the State of Hawaii.  My husband and son returned to the Big Island, packed up our house with the help of awesome friends and family, and joined us on the mainland to battle the Big C.  We wanted to be together as a family unit.


What followed still floors me.  Truly.  Catastrophic illness knocks on your door with an invitation for a club no one wants to join.  During your tenure, patients, family members, friends, and support folks are initiated by fire.  We learn the secret handshakes, a new language, and prepare for the best.  Our family was blessed to get into the Ronald McDonald House, just blocks from Seattle Children's Hospital.  Initially we thought we might bunk with my husband's brother and his family.  A grand plan to save costs and be with our people.  Our medical team informed us that we'd need to find new people to bunk with because Lauren would need to be near the hospital and couldn't be around little tykes in daycare, as adorable as they might be.  Any parent knows, after all, that little people are germ factories. They can't help but be; it's their job: Expose self to germs, bacteria, viruses, and build immunity.  The problem was that my daughter would have a lowered immune system and need to be protected from those same germs, bacteria, and viruses.  So, the Seldens moved to The Clown House and discovered there, along with folks we met at the hospital and elsewhere, a wonderful community.  These folks helped us endure a year of surgeries, chemo, fevers, life-threatening infections, and more.  How could there possibly be more, you might ask?  Imagine the worst and add a cherry.

Back to yesterday.

While dragging from appointment to appointment, I spot a familiar face.  We're up at the Hematology/Oncology clinic and give each other a wave and warm smile.  I tell her with my eyes, "Head up to you, Mama.  Love, love, love to you and your family today."  She sends me the same message.  In that moment we are connected, community.  She's part of my new tribe, new people.  But this exchange is extraordinary because I know this woman mostly online, from a social media support group on FaceBook.  Or is it extraordinary?  It's shocking to me how much of our lives are lived online.  If we're part of social media, we share statuses; give a "thumbs up" to good news; "like" and  <3 and emoticon things; comment, rant, and rave about others.  We can send and receive email; read, write, and/or comment on blogs; and let the world at large know what's happening in the tiniest corners of our lives.  We connect, but only if we choose to do so and only to the extent we want.


Later, I posted to my friend's FB page: "Nice seeing you (but too briefly).  Hope you got my mental hug as we walked past."  She did, bemoaning the wildness of her day.  I understood because we'd experienced a similar kind of crazy--a full day affair of Torture Tuesday.  Orthopedic Clinic and Scan Day for bone cancer kids and their loved ones: labs, scans, more scans, tests, PT appointments, "drive by" hellos from families and staff (the best part!), fear, anxiety, stress, upset stomachs, gnashing of teeth, and then all the waiting for appointments.  Mental hugs on these kinds of days--those stressful, awful days when the world seems to hold its breath for news and results--are golden.  My friend's child has a different kind of cancer, so hers is a different full day.  Then again, any day spent with a loved one who is chronically ill and suffering is torture.  100% pure, unadulterated, and naked… torture.  Writing about it helps.  Taking care of myself helps.  And being open to a community of golden moment smilers, huggers, and tear-wipers helps.        

In a week or so, I will fly to Boulder Colorado to present a paper at an academic conference.  The panel I chair explores myriad topics relating to life writing—writing about the self: autobiography, biography, blogs, exhibitions, diaries, disability narratives, life history, memoir, oral history, quilts, social networks, expression through visual art, writing for and about vulnerable subjects, and more.  How delightful it is that my life's work in academia and my passion for writing have dovetailed!  I just wish the circumstances weren't dire.
Life writing, like parenting a child with a serious illness or disability, is living in the extreme.  It's difficult, uncomfortable, revealing work at times.  Joyful at others.  On the schizophrenic tilt-a-whirl of emotions, there is one constant: Life writing is high-stakes stuff if the writing is honest. You have to get naked and dive in.  And if you write with the intent that others will read your work, it's a public disrobing.

Certain questions tickle my brain: How much truth will we share?  To whom will we share it? And what will be left on the edit room floor?  Suleika Jaouad’s column “Life, Interrupted,” in The New York Times examines some of these topics in a life lived out loud and online.  The spunky 23-year-old writer from Saratoga Springs, N.Y. chronicles her private-turned-public experience with cancer.  In “Posting our Cancer on Facebook” Jaouad writes: “In the world of social media, we are our own self-portraitists. Our digital identity is doctored to show the best version of our lives. (Maybe a more apt name for Facebook would have been “Best Face” book.) It’s not a new observation to point out the disparities between our online identities and our real selves, but for me, as a cancer patient, that gap has never felt larger.” I too have lived a life out loud, especially after my daughter was diagnosed with cancer.  A good deal of my writing now expands on the tensions of online living as a method of defining illness for the self and others.  Those of us who do it use personal and community FaceBook pages, as well as social network sites like CaringBridge and Cole’s Pages. And blogs like this one.  It's a way to connect.      

All smiles at Yummy Cafe!

Yesterday I lived openly and online.  My daughter had her 6 month post-treatment scans and I posted the good news with lots of pictures.  We received the happy phone call during lunch from our dedicated and thoughtful nurse practitioner, "Everything looks good!"  We finished our meal at our favorite Chinese restaurant and toasted fortune cookies.  Lauren laughed out loud, then read the tiny strip of paper pulled from the broken cookie halves. "You will pass a difficult test."  Ha!  My husband called this the second, corroborating opinion.


We returned to the hospital to complete one last test, a bone scan showing growth around the donor graft in Lauren's leg.  But while my daughter received the much hoped for "all clear" NED (no evidence of disease), her best friend did not.  As much as we hope and bargain and pray for the best for our own children, we do the same for the friends who struggle with us.  Crushing news.

Cancer is a devastating, insidious disease.  As I've said to friends and family, it makes a ruinous mess of lives and futures.  But the people we meet along the way--the people we stand with, stand in memory of, and the people we help support when they can't physically (or emotionally) stand on their own--these people are our community.

**  To the members of my golden smile community, I thank you and continue to stand with you through it all.  Thick and thin.  

Learning How Not to Drown

My son is taking 'ocean swimming' as an 8th grade elective. We're in the car today and I ask how his class is going.  He replies: "Well, we swim. He's teaching us how to do the strokes, not just how not to drown."

In my mind, I picture the “How Not to Drown” lesson plan and what it would include.  How do you teach someone not to drown?  Perhaps Mr. Ebersole could give me a tutorial because living in the wake of a cancer diagnosis feels too much like drowning.  Sometimes I get so busy trying to balance my life—home, hearth, and all: husband, kids, pets, work, school, writing, reading, diet, health, the-list-goes-on-ad-nauseam—that I forget to paddle my arms, forget to kick my legs.  I forget that what I’m really doing is treading water.

Later, my mom and I were chatting.  We were driving to lunch and she was giving me directions from the passenger seat because, true confession, although I have lived in Hilo over nine years, I still get lost.  Put a paper bag over my head, spin me around a few times, remove the bag, and I’d be lost on most any street.  Guaranteed.  I’m just not directional.  So, I ask her, quite out of the blue, what she thinks about antidepressants.  “For you?” she asked.  I didn’t answer.  “Well, how could you not be depressed after the year you’ve had?”  She’s got a point, but it’s more than just this last year’s stroll through Cancer hell.  Apparently, when someone upstairs was handing out health-related trouble, I gave it my best Oliver and asked for some more:  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc).  Daughter with cancer—check.  Son with autism—check.  Me and my own bad self with Lupus—check, check.  For practical purposes, let it be known throughout the land that my husband is strictly forbidden to take ill for any reason whatsoever.

So I’m mulling over a decision: to tango or not with the happy pills.  Because, really?  Depression hurts (my TV-addicted brain adds: “Cymbalta can help!”).  It does hurt.  How do we get through the blues?  How do we live through black dog days?  Depression, the real-deal medically diagnosed kind, runs in my family.  Is it that kind, I wonder?   I’m all for better living through pharmaceuticals, but I don’t want to dampen the feeling part of me.  That’s not quite true.  I want to dampen the crushing pain, but I don’t want a Halcion haze.  I’m not entirely sure how I feel about becoming a part of the Sedation Nation.  To be clear, this is a discussion each person should have with his or her own doctor.  I’m not anti-drug by any means, especially when I know anti-depressants help millions of people.  Maybe happy pills are a type of life saver, a flotation device for overwhelmed, water treaders like me.  Not sure yet.

It amazes me, still, how cancer shreds every aspect of a life.  At least that’s been my experience.  Todd and I were lying in bed a few days ago, both stirring and uneasy.  It was too early, not even the Myna birds were up.  Black shadows fold and flow, blushing the air around us.  Objects take shape.  Our library-esque bookcases, over-stacked with books read and to read, change color: black becomes eggplant, then violet, then a brilliant bloom of orchid.  In the ever pinking room, Todd sighs: “You know, a year ago last summer our life was just TOO perfect.”  “And now look,” I answer. “What a ruinous mess.”  Hey, thanks Cancer!

Cancer takes hostages, but asks for no ransom.  What’s left in the aftermath, that ruinous mess, is choice.  One of my favorite books is really three: The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.  In a particularly poignant scene, young Frodo shares a moment of doubt with Gandalf, who answers as a wise wizard would.

Frodo: “I wish none of this had happened.”

Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Thanks, Gandalf, for being such a wizardly badass and for reminding me that I do have choices. But choices lead to questions.  Magical, provoking questions: What will I decide to do with the time given me? How can I transform this experience, transmute the leaden night of mind to a champagne dawn?  In a desperate move, I type this on my Google search bar: Can I buy my very own wizard on eBay?  Short answer: no.  I like Gandalf’s answer, but until I unravel exactly what it is that I want to do, I’ll have to keep treading water.  Big choices mix with storm clouds, and right now the water’s rough.  We’ve got Lauren’s 6 month scans coming up in about three weeks.  Moms in my Solidarity in Sarcoma support group call this “scanxiety.”  I’m surprised to see a web definition: “the tension which builds particularly amongst those who have or have had cancer as they move towards their regular check up scan, hyperscanxiety being the period as they await results!” The exclamation point at the end of this definition surprises me.  It is ridiculous, yet strangely appropriate. I have to laugh because grammar makes sense to me when so many things don’t.  After all, the last fourteen months of my life have been a series of question marks and exclamation points.  And ellipses, the series of dots that indicate an omission, an unfinished thought, or a trailing off into silence.  Because there are still things I can’t say out loud...  What’s in front of me right now is the biggest choice, the one I’ve been asking since that day, the worst day, the day of Lauren's diagnosis: Will I sink or swim?

For over nine years I have lived on an island.  Part of my daily routine, along with clean teeth and a cup of strong tea, is to watch the ocean—Mother Ocean with her steel blue, knowing eyes.  Believe me when I tell you that the ocean is alive, a professor to willing students.   As a lifelong and devoted learner, I study her watery expanse, read her waves, chronicle her tides.  But the water in me goes back even further, an ocean of knowing written on my body under the sign of Pisces. In this way, I was born to swim.

Today on our morning commute.  From the crest of Ponahawai Street we drop into Hilo Town, following a stream of cars ever closer to Connections Public Charter School.  While there are many different routes, this one graces us with an unobstructed view of the bay and of the Pacific Ocean beyond.  I take it all in through the furious swishing of wiper blades.  Swish, swish.  Billie Holiday’s “Stormy Weather” plays in the soundtrack of my mind.  Swish, swish.  The bay!  The water is gunmetal gray, turbid, surface roiling.  Not a good day for swimming.

As we drive I think of my son and his classmates, and how they will struggle later through fifth period at Carlsmith Beach Park.  Mr. Ebersole, ocean swimming teacher of middle schoolers, might offer this lecture on technique: We improve with practice and time.  So today I will practice my swimming.  Although I can’t yet see above the swells, I will work to improve my stroke instead of just trying not to drown.  When I tire, I will seek out and use life preservers that are offered to me: meditation, a chat with friends, self-care, writing, and, if necessary, happy pills. With time and practice I will make it to shore.  In the meantime, I’m getting stronger with faith that the Pisces in me carries with her a body of water knowledge, made stronger with my study with Professor Ocean.  Treading water, swimming, and embracing the time that is given to me.