He left in August. I rattled around the house, face wet with tears and frustration for some weeks after. It was sometime in November I realized the holidays were fast approaching and I’d have to start pulling the scattered pieces of my life together. While I’d like to say it was so I could put a good face on my situation for my kids and family, it really was purely for my own survival. If I didn’t start bagging up some of this wreckage, I wouldn’t make it…period. Luckily I discovered Fred Meyer’s Day After Thanksgiving Sock Sale.
My very short story is this: I was first diagnosed with Breast Cancer in 1999. I survived the mind numbing chemo and body scorching radiation treatments only to have it recur in 2003. In the midst of another more aggressive program of chemo and narcotics to relieve the tumor related back pain, my husband of 32 years had an affair and left. But then, this story isn’t about breakage, this story is about repair.
My recurrence was diagnosed just prior to Thanksgiving, 2003. My last, little did I know, Thanksgiving Day of marital bliss, I spent in bed suffering from an allergic reaction from hell: fever, chills, and rash, all related to my first week’s dosing of cancer killing poison. One year later I sat on the dark side of the moon, the odd numbered place setting at the family’s Thanksgiving Day feast.
That evening I returned home, pulled up into a dark driveway and entered the cold empty house. I stripped off my coat and shoes and headed to the refrigerator to open the nightly bottle of wine. Just tipping the light yellow liquid into the glass calmed me. As I poured through the tall green bottle, my overactive brain cells untangled. Mission accomplished I shut off the lights, put myself to bed and slipped into dreamless sleep.
The next morning, sometime before dawn, that Friday after Thanksgiving, 2004, I woke up void of the normal morning deluge of thundering thoughts: cancer, death, divorce, loneliness. Instead, I lay there with a rather strange compulsion. I needed to get down to the Fred Meyer store. I needed to sip coffee and eat doughnut holes with all my friends and neighbors. I needed to buy socks, two pair for the price of one.
I have never been much of a shopper. Christmas shopping was an ordeal, filled with the stress of the season….too much money and too much pressure to find the perfect gift that would send its recipient into clouds of joyous apoplexy. But there I was, cruising the aisles of Fred Meyer 5:30 a.m. in the dark hours of that Friday morning. I was breathing new air. For those couple of hours pushing my cart through boxes of socks, jog bras, woolen mittens, and piles of unsold frozen turkeys, I was back in the world. I was with people who too had chosen this adventure. They were upright and shopping hours before when, on a normal day, they would be grumbling at their snooze alarms. There we were, at Fred Meyers.
We chatted and compared deals from box games to slippers. We combed the shelves for Christmas lights and replacement bulbs. We fumbled with coupons, timed with deals for CD’s and DVD’s available only if purchased before 9:00 a.m. I was part of this shopping army. I was part of their family and they a part of mine. It was exhilarating, as I felt my heart beat in sync with theirs. We had something very common in common! This place and this time was the launching point, all of us aiming for the same goal: a family celebration of the upcoming Christmas season. It was simple and it was real. I had caught it. I’d caught a hand hold on the side of the cliff over which I had leapt in despair.
This November I find myself just at the five year survival mark, a milestone celebrated in oncology circles. I not only have survived, but now thrive in my new community. My nightly wine habit has been extinguished. Untangling overactive brain cells can be accomplished with a bit of prayer, or meditation, or giving Pearl, my dog, a good belly scratch.
I look forward to this Thanksgiving to be with my family and our traditional feast. But it is special for me. It is the day before the anniversary of my first day, the Fred Meyer Day After Thanksgiving Sock Sale. I will wheel my cart through the aisles early Friday morning and celebrate that day, now four years ago. Because it was that day I first heard and believed in the tiny whisper of my own voice as it sang its own sweet solo.
November 13, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Body Work
Her belly skin folded. What the hell was that all about? She lay there flat on her back in bed. Her fingers measured the deep skin folds on the sides of her belly, above the hip bone and below her ribs the skin slopped over and folded.
“Folded? Folded skin?” The words in her mind repeating as she tried to imagine this skin suit that she’d worn her entire life had now collapsed on itself.
Tears streamed hot from her eyes, out the sides burning a flow directly into her ears. She pulled her right hand out from one of the side folds and dipped her index finger into the right ear to push the warm and now waxy liquid out. It flooded back into the nape of her neck and was absorbed in the pillowcase. She felt the wet on her scalp and could care less. Prior to Shellyanne’s birth, Monica had attempted to educate herself on the changes she’d experience transitioning from young adult to new mom. But folded skin? What the hell?
Teddy had brought “his girls” (God, she wasn’t going to like that either) home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. His mom was there. Marge arrived two days before and was able to do the dishes had dispose of the pizza boxes and Chinese food containers that they’d consumed in the heavy couple of days before the trip to the hospital.
Lying there now in their bed, she had few blissful recollections of the trip home and the first couple of hours as a new family. Teddy’s mom, was at the door wiping her hands off with a limp kitchen towel. “ Bet she can’t wait to get her mitts on her,” Monica remembered that thought crossing her mind. The tension in the house lit the place all night long. Marge finally exited to the family room, pulling out the sofa bed, making her bed for the night. That left Teddy and her with the baby in limbo between the nursery and their bedroom. They’d planned to have the baby sleep in their room, but hadn’t contemplated the changing routine. They were stashing dirty diapers in odd corners, the spare bathroom, as well on the changing table. With the change there was always something missing; the wipes had been left elsewhere, baby powder, a change of clothes, etc. Thus it was a group effort with every change of the baby, one of them calling for the other to bring whatever was missing.
Then there was the feeding. The maternity ward nurses kept referring to it as getting a good “latch” and “latching on.” The image that would jump into her mind was the machines plumbed up in some barn’s milking parlor. All she knew was the struggle to get Shellyanne positioned correctly. Once in the proper angle for feeding, she’d try to guide her huge breast into the tiny face, something like docking the space shuttle to the space station. Hit or miss, she knew she’d have to endure the painful pull of the baby’s sucking on her tender skin. This whole nursing thing and the pain involved was a well kept secret, indeed.
But they’d managed the first night. They were exhausted, tense, and scared to death that if not watched 24/7 Shellyanne would quit breathing and expire.
Monica inhaled a big load of air hoping that she might then be able to exhale the stale breath she felt caught in her body. She felt her lungs strain. With that extra bit of expansion in her ribcage she felt herself lighten a bit. But as soon as she forced the last bit of air out she lost focus. She found her fingers back searching the folds of her belly and tracing a picture of baby Shellyanne in her mind. As Monica recalled the tiny fingers of the darling baby her breasts suddenly ached and a sharp sting pierced her nipples. Her hands moved from her belly up to her breasts. Gently she felt them. Hard and round they sat as solid mounds on her otherwise jellied torso. Brushing her hands over her nipples she felt them wet. The more she thought of Shellyanne the wetter she got.
All the reading and classes she’d taken during her pregnancy had sounded so magical and unreal. Now she lay there oozing sticky sweet liquid from her chest while her midsection slid over her sides. Hardly magical and much too real. Tears came again, this time uncontrolled sobbing: her body, her husband, her mother-in-law, her baby, her past, her future, ..all these topics filled thoughts of fear, pain, frustration and regret.
This was supposed to be the happiest time and she felt nothing but dark apprehension. It was supposed to be a time of spiritual insight, intense unconditional love, and the golden transition from what was to what will be. She could not go back, but she could not go forward. She was stuck, stuck in the folds of her heavy belly, stuck in the birth canal of her new life. Alive and well was what she hoped for. But alive was what she was. Alive in this new body, in this new world, with a new companion, one formed within her. Then she heard Shellyanne’s tiny cry. The smallness of this new noise worked just as those last few painful pushes. Pulling herself to her feet she felt herself snap into her new existence. And in that moment, exhaling as she stepped away from her bed she got a glimpse of immortality.
“Folded? Folded skin?” The words in her mind repeating as she tried to imagine this skin suit that she’d worn her entire life had now collapsed on itself.
Tears streamed hot from her eyes, out the sides burning a flow directly into her ears. She pulled her right hand out from one of the side folds and dipped her index finger into the right ear to push the warm and now waxy liquid out. It flooded back into the nape of her neck and was absorbed in the pillowcase. She felt the wet on her scalp and could care less. Prior to Shellyanne’s birth, Monica had attempted to educate herself on the changes she’d experience transitioning from young adult to new mom. But folded skin? What the hell?
Teddy had brought “his girls” (God, she wasn’t going to like that either) home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. His mom was there. Marge arrived two days before and was able to do the dishes had dispose of the pizza boxes and Chinese food containers that they’d consumed in the heavy couple of days before the trip to the hospital.
Lying there now in their bed, she had few blissful recollections of the trip home and the first couple of hours as a new family. Teddy’s mom, was at the door wiping her hands off with a limp kitchen towel. “ Bet she can’t wait to get her mitts on her,” Monica remembered that thought crossing her mind. The tension in the house lit the place all night long. Marge finally exited to the family room, pulling out the sofa bed, making her bed for the night. That left Teddy and her with the baby in limbo between the nursery and their bedroom. They’d planned to have the baby sleep in their room, but hadn’t contemplated the changing routine. They were stashing dirty diapers in odd corners, the spare bathroom, as well on the changing table. With the change there was always something missing; the wipes had been left elsewhere, baby powder, a change of clothes, etc. Thus it was a group effort with every change of the baby, one of them calling for the other to bring whatever was missing.
Then there was the feeding. The maternity ward nurses kept referring to it as getting a good “latch” and “latching on.” The image that would jump into her mind was the machines plumbed up in some barn’s milking parlor. All she knew was the struggle to get Shellyanne positioned correctly. Once in the proper angle for feeding, she’d try to guide her huge breast into the tiny face, something like docking the space shuttle to the space station. Hit or miss, she knew she’d have to endure the painful pull of the baby’s sucking on her tender skin. This whole nursing thing and the pain involved was a well kept secret, indeed.
But they’d managed the first night. They were exhausted, tense, and scared to death that if not watched 24/7 Shellyanne would quit breathing and expire.
Monica inhaled a big load of air hoping that she might then be able to exhale the stale breath she felt caught in her body. She felt her lungs strain. With that extra bit of expansion in her ribcage she felt herself lighten a bit. But as soon as she forced the last bit of air out she lost focus. She found her fingers back searching the folds of her belly and tracing a picture of baby Shellyanne in her mind. As Monica recalled the tiny fingers of the darling baby her breasts suddenly ached and a sharp sting pierced her nipples. Her hands moved from her belly up to her breasts. Gently she felt them. Hard and round they sat as solid mounds on her otherwise jellied torso. Brushing her hands over her nipples she felt them wet. The more she thought of Shellyanne the wetter she got.
All the reading and classes she’d taken during her pregnancy had sounded so magical and unreal. Now she lay there oozing sticky sweet liquid from her chest while her midsection slid over her sides. Hardly magical and much too real. Tears came again, this time uncontrolled sobbing: her body, her husband, her mother-in-law, her baby, her past, her future, ..all these topics filled thoughts of fear, pain, frustration and regret.
This was supposed to be the happiest time and she felt nothing but dark apprehension. It was supposed to be a time of spiritual insight, intense unconditional love, and the golden transition from what was to what will be. She could not go back, but she could not go forward. She was stuck, stuck in the folds of her heavy belly, stuck in the birth canal of her new life. Alive and well was what she hoped for. But alive was what she was. Alive in this new body, in this new world, with a new companion, one formed within her. Then she heard Shellyanne’s tiny cry. The smallness of this new noise worked just as those last few painful pushes. Pulling herself to her feet she felt herself snap into her new existence. And in that moment, exhaling as she stepped away from her bed she got a glimpse of immortality.
Auschwitz, Poland
June 17, 2008
Ground to bits
Under foot
Bits
Bits of bone
I stand on that ground.
Admission paid I walk
Into dank long brick lined quarters
To witness
Governmental obsession,
Legal paranoia
Civil obliteration
Whereby morality was
ground to bits
Body of evidence, Scene one
Behind the glass wall
Piled froths of human hair
Grayed dull with age
Braided piles tossed
Yet to be woven and
Rolled into yards of fabric
To clothe
Murders.
Body of evidence, Scene two
Displayed in heaps
Weathered soles
Leather strapped, and wooden carved shoes
Heels run over
Muddied, filthy, yet
Compulsively matched
Abandoned
Body of evidence, Scene Three
Piled as if left at the airport
Baggage Claim
Leather and cardboard luggage
Possessions, lettered white with hope
Franz, Herman, Elsa,
Lives in suitcases, latched shut
Forever
Body of evidence, Scene Four
Unanimated limbs
Legs, knees, feet
Crutches warped, twisted
Angle iron and wood
Custom fitted for ambulation
Stacked as debris.
Four dioramas stuffed full of human artifacts
As if left only yesterday, not decades ago.
Hope abandoned
Despair beats loud in my ears
My heart empties
I retreat
Down the long dim hallway
Outside, I refill with clean oxygen
My eyes search the sky for space
The horizon
A vista on which to pin
My reality
But
It continues
Body of evidence, Scene Five
The special executions
The Gray wall pocked marked with the ricochet of gunshot
Wood beams lined with hooks to hang hoodless ghosts
Airless cells that gasp misery.
So many bodies shot, hung, and stored
As a butcher’s store of red meat.
Body of evidence, Scene Six
Solid, cold, cement cubicles host
A front portico where
Naked feet gathered to file into
The bunker.
1.5 million noses
Inhale
3 million lungs
Gulp
Paralyzing gas
Body of evidence, Scene Seven
Parallel narrow iron rails
Direct themselves to small fireboxes to
Burn, extinguish, eliminate
Them
The ones who could not fill
The obsession
The ones who became fuel to
The obliteration
The ones, victims of
The fear that required
A final solution
Save the bits.
Bits who screamed and sang
Bits who cried and laughed
Bits who despaired and prayed
Bits who lost and loved
Ground bits
Remains
Ground to bits
Under foot
Bits
Bits of bone
I stand on that ground.
Admission paid I walk
Into dank long brick lined quarters
To witness
Governmental obsession,
Legal paranoia
Civil obliteration
Whereby morality was
ground to bits
Body of evidence, Scene one
Behind the glass wall
Piled froths of human hair
Grayed dull with age
Braided piles tossed
Yet to be woven and
Rolled into yards of fabric
To clothe
Murders.
Body of evidence, Scene two
Displayed in heaps
Weathered soles
Leather strapped, and wooden carved shoes
Heels run over
Muddied, filthy, yet
Compulsively matched
Abandoned
Body of evidence, Scene Three
Piled as if left at the airport
Baggage Claim
Leather and cardboard luggage
Possessions, lettered white with hope
Franz, Herman, Elsa,
Lives in suitcases, latched shut
Forever
Body of evidence, Scene Four
Unanimated limbs
Legs, knees, feet
Crutches warped, twisted
Angle iron and wood
Custom fitted for ambulation
Stacked as debris.
Four dioramas stuffed full of human artifacts
As if left only yesterday, not decades ago.
Hope abandoned
Despair beats loud in my ears
My heart empties
I retreat
Down the long dim hallway
Outside, I refill with clean oxygen
My eyes search the sky for space
The horizon
A vista on which to pin
My reality
But
It continues
Body of evidence, Scene Five
The special executions
The Gray wall pocked marked with the ricochet of gunshot
Wood beams lined with hooks to hang hoodless ghosts
Airless cells that gasp misery.
So many bodies shot, hung, and stored
As a butcher’s store of red meat.
Body of evidence, Scene Six
Solid, cold, cement cubicles host
A front portico where
Naked feet gathered to file into
The bunker.
1.5 million noses
Inhale
3 million lungs
Gulp
Paralyzing gas
Body of evidence, Scene Seven
Parallel narrow iron rails
Direct themselves to small fireboxes to
Burn, extinguish, eliminate
Them
The ones who could not fill
The obsession
The ones who became fuel to
The obliteration
The ones, victims of
The fear that required
A final solution
Save the bits.
Bits who screamed and sang
Bits who cried and laughed
Bits who despaired and prayed
Bits who lost and loved
Ground bits
Remains
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