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.