Turkey, Socks and a Song

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