I’m dying here.
I suppose that isn’t something that should be said in cancer blog, but I am, I am dying inside. Read the rest of this entry »
Archives for posts with tag: children and mom’s breast cancer
Kryptonite
10
A remix on this Mother’s Day of my two favorite blogs about my two favorite people in the world….
I kinda think they hung the moon… Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been avoidant.
Okay, maybe a little lazy with a capital Z mixed in as well.
A little unfocused. Perhaps a little scattered and overextended.
But really.
Mostly avoidant.
Despite the urging and friendly Yoo-Hoo’s of others to come back out to play, I have dug my heels in and looked away.
In fact, I have a confession to make. Please forgive me y’all. I’ve been avoidant of reading the other bloggesses blogs as well.
Truth is, way back yonder in December I promised I’d be back soon. And “soon” by any stretch of the definition well, “soon” has done come and gone. And I still sit here, avoidant.
At first I thought I just needed a little break. I really loved writing my lil blog every week, and kinda got to where it was a part of me. Initially, it felt good to empty out the trash can, and to spill out the rummage left behind in my head by cancer. I felt humbly, that I had figured out why I was still here. At first.
My little über analyzing brain has tried and tried to figure out what’s up with the delay of my return to the blogosphere. After a year of writing about the ick and nonsense and cancer drama, I can only describe to you more what I didn’t feel than what I did.
What I didn’t feel anymore was the gratification of the purge; I didn’t feel the expected satisfaction of succinctly tying up so many loose ends and setting them free. At the end of it, I no longer felt the organized glee of putting them all into neatly categorized drawers and boxes and sliding the drawers shut.
No, I didn’t feel the satisfaction of the emptied attic. It left me with nothing to do with my hands. And really, what’s the point of being the crazy old woman in the attic if there is no fodder, if there are no chests to open and frantically grab and wildly throw the contents about while screaming about cancer?
The empty space, albeit peaceful, haunted me more some days than a head chock full of trauma bits.
I mean, who was I if I wasn’t the girl with cancer? What should I do with a mind born to dissect and analyze everything to death when there was thankfully, no apparent death to analyze?
Perhaps (I entertained but for only a moment) I am a tad histrionic after all, thriving on drama and needing crisis to feel like I was alive, forever needing something to do with my racing mind and hands. Perhaps it’s why the stillness, which I did not really resent, felt odd.
What I felt was nothing. Not good or bad, not relief or angst. Nothing. A void. An absence of something that had taken up a whole lot of space. Emptiness where the cancer was, a big empty attic previously taken up by the cancer.
And a reluctance to refill the room with those thoughts again.
Early on in my cancer diagnosis, I was sitting in Grandmother Willow’s office. This was shortly after the dirty little secret of breast cancer was whispered in my ear; that the trick is not it getting rid of it the first time, but in keeping it away. Grandmother Willow was trying to stem my rapidly racing thoughts as they made loop after loop, trying to assure me that one day this cancer would all seem an afterthought.
Because I can sometimes be a Little Miss Know It All, I often tend to call bullshit on theories that don’t match up with my picture of the world, and that day was no different. I remember thinking maybe she was the crazy old lady in the attic because I could see nothing but a life from here on in with the grim reaper as my constant traveling companion, forever bound like members of a chain gang with his endless whisper distracting me for eternity.
I distinctly remember her telling me about woman who recently came to see her who, after a whole first session of spilling her current emotional history said, “And oh yeah, and I had breast cancer ten years ago.” “Oh yeah,” like she had forgotten about it. “Oh yeah,” like it was an afterthought.
“Bullshit,” I thought.
Sitting bald and frightened on her couch, it seemed inconceivable that cancer would one day take up so little room in my life; that it would become such a non entity in my identity. That in the game board of Lauren’s life, cancer would become such a non player in my current emotions on any given future day.
Yet, this is how I have felt these last months. I have felt the absence of cancer.
After years of thinking about nothing but cancer, I have somehow managed to get to where it is not part of the complexion of my being. One day last week, a neighbor stopped to tell me she had gotten her port out that morning. I felt this blankness when she said it, not lack of empathy, but more a situation where I was unable to summon the empathy because I had forgotten how it felt to be in her shoes. I knew she must feel relief, but I couldn’t feel the taste of it in my mouth anymore. When I started to try to remember what I had blogged about ports, I couldn’t even remember what I had written. All I could remember was how hilarious it was that Wendy had made hers into a daisy.
When I went back to read that blog, I swear to you, it was as if someone else had written it. Sometimes this happens with my mom; I can’t remember what she looked like until I look at pictures, and then I am surprised at features in her face that I forgot.
I was detached from cancer. Detached from the chain gang.
Years ago, big surprise, I had to take Concerta for my ADD. With that drug, the thought of food and hunger vanished. I’m not saying I wasn’t hungry or my appetite was curbed, I am saying that the thought of food no longer crossed my mind. I’d be sitting there feeling faint and go, “Oh, yeah, I haven’t eaten in two days.” This little pill took away the emotion and rituals and grooves in my brain that were attached to food and eating; it eliminated the craving and the timing and desire to indulge in this so familiar and daily ritual.
This little blog did the same with cancer. I don’t indulge in cancer much these days. But, it’s not healthy to not need food, nor is healthy to avoid part of your being.
I remember reading how Lance was in an doctor’s office finding out he was just covered with cancer. It seemed insurmountable, yet a few days later after he talked to doctor after doctor about what each intended to do with each and every metastasis he proclaimed, “We had talked this thing down to size.”
Blog by blog, a bite of the proverbial elephant (or grim reaper) at a time, I too had talked the memories and trauma, the cancer down to size.
While the bell can never be un-rung, somehow, somehow….swirling my pen around in the well un-cast the dye. Like a magnet, my pen pulled the dye cast long ago from the water, bringing it from pink to very, very pale, almost indiscernible pink.
Perhaps I lived my way into (at least some of) the answers.
Perhaps I am just reluctant, not avoidant. Perhaps I am detached; not sure that I want to re-attach, or how to re-attach without it filling the room up again.
Perhaps, I have just moved seamlessly, as we do with grief, into acceptance.
Perhaps, I have indeed outlived it.
So in these last months, my life has been filled with all the stuff of teenagers. Colleges visits, college apps, obsessing about the right high school and college choices, proms and dances, driving lessons, graduation preparations for two and undergoing some good old-fashioned teenaged drama teaching me I better grow some thick skin real fast. (Suddenly, I have become a whole lot less smart and a whole lot less funny.) My pop survived another wicked pneumonia, and Scout is still the best dog ever made at the dog factory. Through all of this, I have worn some very good friends down with my new looping obsession; my anticipatory grief that life is gonna change real soon as the kids and people and dogs I love fly away. But in all this, we are busy, busy, busy here at the ranch distracted by life not death; indeed life is moving forward at warp speed.
And oh yeah, six years ago I had cancer.
I’m back.
A little at a time, so as not to fill the attic,
but I’m back.
xoxo
Lauren
Once when Amelia was just a tiny little cutie pie (as opposed to the even bigger cutie pie that she is now,) I woke up to a sticky note on my bathroom mirror. It said in little kid printing, “Thank you for protekting me.” Read the rest of this entry »
Yep you read that right. Five Ears. Not five Years.
Y oh Y, you might ask, did I drop the Y?
Because I’m talking mouse ears silly, that’s why; Mickey Mouse ears to be exact.
As I hit “publish” on this beautiful orange juicy sunny Florida morning, I am sitting poolside at our very favoritest hotel in the world, the Pop Century Resort in Disney World. Enjoying a big cuppa of Mickey Joe and a tummy full of Mickey waffles, I am both overshadowed and comforted by the familiarity that is a four stories tall Mowgli and Baloo next to our hotel room. I have achieved Disney nirvana here next to the Hippy Dippy Pool; yes indeedy, I have all the bare necessities for this bear to rest at ease.
This trip marks the fifth pilgrimage to the House of Mouse for us since I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
As it is for everyone, cancer treatment was hell for my little family. Looooong months of the drip drip drip of chemo, surgery, weeks of radiation but the worst for a mom was the pain of lots of the fun things that kids like to do like sleepovers and other potentially germ ridden activities being put on hold. My kiddos were so little when cancer came to our house, and I promised their little faces that when the treatment was over, we were going to go to Disney.
Disney World became our carrot, or more correctly our cheese.
Now I had a lot of naysayers about the wisdom of me taking that first trip when I had just finished radiation and still had the drip of Herceptin going, the loudest of which was the voice of reason in my own bald noggin. I realized that I was in no physical shape to trutz two little kids through the massive undertaking of flying, touring four parks in four days, and lasting through 12 hour days in the heat. Beyond broke, I was digging into rapidly dwindling emergency savings to take the trip. But as with most things in life that I really want, when my Pop or other logical adults like my alter-ego voice in my own head reminded me of the sensible thing to do, I didn’t listen.
For some reason, going to Disney represented so much more to me than a vacation. It was about being normal again and bonding with my kids in that familiar way that we had about us before cancer came. It was about giving them the tradition of joy my mom and I had there together. It was about saying that cancer was behind us and promising them that good times were just a day away.
It was mostly about too, I suspect honestly, the fear that it was the last chance to get them to Disney World. It was hard for me to believe in the future.
As I think back on the evolvement of our trips over these last five years, it seems that the tempo of each one has mirrored much of where my life and healing was at that point. That first year out I led my life at a frantic pace, wanting to squeeze ALL of life in because I was scared I’d miss something, scared there would be no tomorrow. And too, that first trip to Orlando was kind of an awful Disney Overdrive, a busy bee buzzing through the parks. Sometimes now, as I look back on it I feel sad when I remember the intensity of the trip, how much I crammed into it so that they would see every last thing, and do every last thing, and remember every last thing– afraid we’d miss something; afraid it would be, well, our last thing. We got up early for magic hours, and stayed up late to see every fireworks show, every parade. Exhausted, hot, tired and cranky kids racing through the parks in a way I doubt they remember much more than a blur.
Truth is, much of my life at that time is still a blur.
Cancer had made me lose trust in body, and this fear showed up on that trip. I sent my son on rides alone because as much as I LOVE rides, I worried about the trustworthiness of my Herceptin saturated heart, and did not want to poke the skunk on Expedition Everest with two little ones in tow. Cancer, despite being told to stay home, wound up coming with us anyway; refusing to be left behind and bringing with it the heavy luggage I carried through each park every day, baggage that contained my ID, insurance card, my oncologist info, my cardiologist, the kids’ dad’s emergency contact info, and list of all current poisons being infused…just in case.
How we did that trip said a lot about how tenuous my life felt at the time. Even though I went to there to feel normal, I couldn’t find normal, or even the illusion of normal, not even in Fantasyland. There were no big adventures had in Adventureland and Tomorrowland well, it just made me uncomfortable, because it made me think too much about how there may not be a tomorrow.
As the years went by however, and I got a foothold on life, the tempo of our visits to Disney also fell in step with the cadence of my healing psyche. There was no longer this mad rush to see and do everything, to cram it all in. Adventures were found at last, fantasies came true, and cancer was not allowed admittance into the Magic Kingdom ever again.
And eventually, I began to trust that there would be a Tomorrowland for we three Mouseketeers.
My kids grew, right along with my confidence in living. They got to where they packed and carried their own luggage and we rode all the thrill rides. Back when my pace to see and do it all was frantic, I remembering wondering why if you came all the way to Disney you would waste a day at the water park or the hotel pool, instead of being at one of the parks. And what do you know, last year Amelia and I went to Typhoon Lagoon for the first time ever, and had THE BEST time; I have discovered the glory of sliding down Summit Plummet, unceremoniously plucking my swim suit out of my butt as I stood up, and then polishing off a giant turkey leg in its wake. I found that a lot of good conversation happens on a lazy river and during quiet afternoons at the hippy dippy pool.
The memories our family has stacked up now, after five ears, are more than even Dumbo could carry:
Embarrassing my kids each year with the extensive diorama I create in our hotel room window, hot days where we hit “the wall” and formed a mini flash mob-ish hat search in the Emporium for the goofiest goofy hats to sport for the rest of the day. Surprising my little ones with giant icees with Mickey feet while they were sitting and waiting for a parade to start, garnering a collective kid eye roll by standing up and clapping when Barack Obama stood up for the first time in the Hall of Presidents. Popcorn for dinner, Princess breakfasts where I asked Colton who that Aladdin looking guy was and he said, “Uh that would be Aladdin mom,” and the look on Amelia’s face when Belle hugged her told her she was pretty. Going into the animation studio to draw 5 times in a row, and sharing Pixar joy with Colton while watching Luxo pop out and perform while waiting for the Toy Story ride. Light up ice cubes at the Sci Fi restaurant, Soarin’ in the smell of orange groves and devouring, well, more than one or two French pastries in Epcot.
We girls still giggle about following a drip drip drip of chocolate ice cream trail along the pavement back to our hotel room one day, finding a smear of chocolate ice cream on the door frame, and then opening the door to find quite happy Colton on the bed with his chocolate ice cream cone…(finally a good kind of drip.)
How each day I gave them a souvenir allowance and took glee in seeing how carefully they picked their parts for Mr. Potato head to fill the box, and how they danced around when I surprised them one evening with a bonus allowance for an extra little somethin’ somethin’. Watching my princess become even more of a princess at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, seeing them laugh face to face at as they spun in the teacups together, and a tiny Amelia clapping with giant Mickey hands at Fantasmic. Finding every Hidden Mickey the park with Colton, and riding in a giant honey pot 42 times in a row with my own little Lilo and Stitch at the Halloween party. The “Paging Mr. Morrow, Mr. Tom Morrow,” announcement on the People Mover perfectly chimed in on by mom on cue, giant clear balloons with a blue Mickey heads inside and the thrill we felt when we traded for the pin we had searched high and Lilo for. Watching my kids pretend to be completely appalled at how boring they think the Carousel of Progress ride is each year when I make them ride with me, and how I make the ride even worse by singing, loudly, along with the song, “It’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.” Louder and louder each year, as I become more convinced in tomorrow. More grateful for tomorrow. More confident that tomorrow will be great and big and beautiful things.
We did indeed find new frontiers in Frontierland after all, and normal found us, nested us in the soft white gloved hands of Mickey.
But what I most remember most aren’t the rides, or the things we saw, but the times. The times. And the very best of those times were always, always Mickey gloved hands down, the evenings back in the hotel when tired fits of giggles overtook us and we laughed until we cried. Oodles of giddy giggles launched from the deep comfort of being in this insular, happy place; a place where, as we slept in the shadow of Baloo we did indeed forget about our worries and our strife. The times I thought we may never have again.
In our home, a long narrow ledge surrounds our stairs. Lined up on that ledge, in a mini mouse-like timeline, you’ll see our Mickey ears from the all the years of Disney trips. Cute pink little girl ears, Kermit the Frog ears, Steamboat Willie ears, and Toy Story ears. Ears that look like a Pumpkin, and ears with a Sorcerer Mickey Wizard Hat perched between them. And lastly, classic Mickey and Minnie ears with “Colton” and “Amelia” and “Lauren”embroidered in gold thread on the back. On the doorknobs to my home office hang lanyards loaded with Disney trading pins, each of strand telling a unique story; a tale of what we loved that year and what made us smile and laugh, of what calmed us and what made us find us again.
These things represent so much to me, they hold so much meaning….healing, longevity, a visual measure of a life coming to pass that I wasn’t so sure would do so, five years ago. Our own personal Disney vault of memories; the times…the times where we were overshadowed by Baloo and the simple bare necessities, instead of cancer, the times where we lived, no basked in a great big beautiful tomorrow. Cancer no doubt, takes a lot from us but sometimes, sometimes it gives us something, or just plain allows us to find something that was right in front of us all the time. It urges us to find the time.
It’s hard to see, but sometimes, cancer allows us to live.
Sometimes, it takes soaring above it all on the Astro Orbiter or on an Aladdin Magic Carpet to see it, and sometimes we must climb to a perch in the Swiss Family Treehouse to spot it. Sometimes, it is found deep in the space of a mountain, but mostly, it is found right next to us in the excited breaths of those we love, and in the deep pull in, of our own breath, as we Splash down a Mountain.
Without cancer, I don’t think this Disney thing would have ever gotten started in the first place. It would have been just another one of those things put off indefinitely, to when the kids were older, to when there was enough money to do it, till I was totally healthy…. till tomorrow.
Walt used to say, “I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.”
Yes Walt; a mouse, a single cancer cell and a woman who didn’t lose the sight of one thing, one dream-living to see her kids in mouse ears, spinning with glee in teacups and flying high above it all in Dumbo.
One pair of ears at a time, I lived my way into Tomorrowland. And it is for sure, A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.
“Paging Mr. Morrow, Mr. Tom Morrow,” Lauren is looking for you.
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow’s just a dream away
Man has a dream and that’s the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It’s a dream come true for you and me
So there’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away
~The Sherman Brothers
I was only seven. In the second grade.
I didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t have too much recollection unless I’m reminded of something. I didn’t know what could’ve happened. I didn’t know she could have died. I didn’t know how lucky I was that I still had a mother in the end. All I knew is that she would be okay in the end. And she was.
I remember the things I loved. Like my infamous pink cowgirl boots that were gonna, “kick cancer’s butt.” And how I became a staff member right along with the other workers at radiation every morning, I even had a nametag with my school picture attached to it. Driving to Rex Hospital in the convertible listening to “Put Your Records On” by Corrine Bailey Rae. The day I was at school while mom was having her final surgery and not being able to take it off my mind all day, then hearing she was going to be okay. Or the craft ladies that came every Tuesday to the waiting room and I would stay back with them while my mom got her radiation done. Tying the ties on the back of her gown.
You can’t think any seven year old girl would remember that, when it was 5 years ago. I barely knew what breast cancer was. Did I ask? I don’t remember. I remember the good things, nothing that I wouldn’t want to think about today. I did it for a reason. When people hear that my mom had breast cancer when I was seven and in the second grade, I always get the generic, “Oh! I’m so sorry! Is she better now?” and it’s always the same generic answer, “Yea, she’s better. Thanks. I don’t really remember it that well so it’s okay.”
Going to the gift shop afterwards and those little boxes of cranberry juice every morning from the mini fridge in the waiting room before. It never occurred to me the time that I was getting up every morning to go with her, which now I would dread every morning. I thought that me going along would help her get better. And in a way, it did. She needed my support then and she still does. I was there for her then and always will be.
My two favorite memories. Two things I know that neither me nor my mom will ever forget.
That day where mom was in the shower and I was in the bathtub next to her. She stepped out, wrapped the towel around her, and stepped over to the sink. She grabbed the comb as I watched her. She started brushing her hair, and the hair was going down with the brush, falling out of her head. Mom started crying. I had never seen my mom cry before. I stepped out of the bath and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay mommy. We knew this was going to happen.” She turned around and I wrapped her in my arms. I had to be strong.
My other favorite. THE PINK BOOTS. Yes, the pink boots that kicked cancer’s butt. By this point in reading, even just this paragraph, you have to understand I was an interesting little kid, as I am to this day. I believe those boots played a part in why my mom is still here today. I wore those boots everywhere. School, the store, anywhere we went. Those boots came.
I was stronger than then I could’ve even tried to be today. I didn’t know that she could’ve died. I didn’t know what breast cancer even was. I knew cancer was bad and that everyone was helping my mom out, but I sure didn’t know she could’ve died. Now, I know cancer is bad. I know it’s bad in a different way than the seven year old mind thought it was bad. I know I could be living with my dad now. And only my dad.
I’m lucky that my mom had the doctor she did.
I’m lucky that my mom is still here with me.
I’m lucky she was strong to show me I could be too.
I’m lucky for everything.
Today’s guest blogger is Amelia Hope, my 13 year old little girl.
I believe I have the best little girl in the world, I do. Yes, of that I am certain.
She still makes me stronger than I could ever be without her.
Still the bravest of hearts and I love her so.
after five years 