Acceptance

It’s Sunday afternoon. We’re out running errands before our upcoming summer vacation. And I am smiling - smiling at the day, smiling at the future, smiling.

A sense of normal has returned. Cancer is a nightmare that I just may live through. Arthritis is a misfortune that will fluctuate in degree of disturbance. I will live, and live in happiness. (Or, at least for now.)

I’m walking down the sidewalk holding my little boy’s hand. He’s wearing an unbecoming outfit, born partly of the majority of his clothes being packed for our trip and partly of my granting him autonomy in the selection process this morning. The strange-fitting jeans, outdated hand-me-down loafers, and ugly red and green toolbox sweater do not diminish his handsome little face. 

In the time we walk from one block corner to the next, he manages to get in a steady stream of questions that includes, “Is coffee healthy? Why do we have to go to bed every day? Where is a bee's stinger?”

I laugh softly at his constant stream of words. As I look down at his little body next to mine, I hear my mother-in-law telling me how his daddy too was a jabber-box, and then one day, right around puberty, just stopped talking near bouts altogether. I know that day will likely come with Little H too. He’ll reach an age when he wants independence from us, where he’s not interested in sharing his thoughts or questions with Mom or Dad. He’ll go into his room a growing boy, who raids the refrigerator with regularity and who cares deeply about his friends’ opinions, and then he’ll come out a young man. With a deep voice and a broadening interest in his girlfriend, he’ll emerge and turn into the person he’s going to be. Oh, that I long to be there to see it. 

While I often ache over the possibility of missing his life, a part of me has begun to accept that he will be okay even without me - he and my daughter. My husband is a man of utmost character, and he is an excellent father; he would raise my children into beautiful people even without my help. And the love and support that our families would surround them with would help him along and keep them afloat.  

I squeeze Little H’s hand. I want to tell him I will be here to keep answering his questions, to clip his fingernails and hold him when he cries. I want to tell him that I will still be here to fill the fridge for him as he grows, to drop him off at the movie theater a block away, safely out of sight of his friends, to cheer on the sidelines of his sports games, to meet his girlfriend, to wait outside the door when he shuts himself inside. I am proud of you already Little H; I believe you have what it takes to become a great man.

“What are snails made out of?” he asks. I kneel down next to him to tie the lace of his ugly, brown shoe. His huge hazel eyes with long, curled eyelashes that make me jealous, stare expectantly at me. “Snails are slugs inside a shell,” I answer. And then, “I love you so much, son.” 

“I love you too Mommy,” he replies easily, "up to the moon and back." 

As I’m standing back up, I feel my baby girl kick hard inside me, as she frequently does. She is strong and healthy.

The world is right.

Stepping into Reality through Little Shoes

On a warm summer afternoon, my brother and his family arrive to spend the day at the beach with us. With them they bring just about everything their daughter has outgrown in the three years of her life, delivering us several large plastic boxes of pink. 

Passed down baby items and clothes have become a perk of being the youngest in a large family. My brothers have gone ahead of me and had 2, 3, and 4 children, respectively, making Little H the youngest in a brood of 10 grandchildren for my parents. Our daughter will be the 11th and final of their generation.  

After a day of summer fun, we return home to our family room that looks like about 200 gallons of sherbet melted across it. As soon as the beach sand from the day is washed down the shower drain, the pizza sauce from dinner wiped from the dining room table, and H's tired, sun-kissed head on the pillow, I am upstairs opening those boxes of miniature couture.

I want to see all the tiny ruffles, ribbons, and bows. I unfold and refold one pint-sized shirt, pant and dress after another. I'm so used to big-wheeled vehicles, sports balls and four legged-critters, I keep smiling at the delicate flowers, butterflies, and hearts. I hold them up and feel happy, marveling at both the sudden flood of pink that is soon to wash over our household and the extreme but fleeting delicacy of a newborn.

I open a small box filled with shoes and slippers in various sizes and rummage through the scuffed patent leather and velcro bows. I lift a tiny pair of sandals out and stare at them. I keep running my fingers over the soles that will one day soon hold my baby's soft feet. MY daughter; I have a little girl. She exists. Her feet will be real and she will slide them into butterfly sandals, pink Converse, and rhinestone flip-flops. She is real. I keep touching those tiny shoes in a frozen state of reality.

I spent the first half of this pregnancy afraid of losing her; the second half is tipping toward a fear that she will lose me.

Almost daily now, I battle varying degrees of fear that I will not live to raise my children. In the same way that I am now not prone to imagine the future in general with any sort of clarity or certainty, I have been hesitant to imagine raising a daughter with any sort of detail or unabashed enthusiasm. I don't want to anticipate joy that may not be mine to experience.

She will have long hair, probably with lots of curls. Will I be there to brush it and braid it for her? She will take dance lessons and wear tutus at some point. Will I be there to watch her twirl and plie? She'll want to go shopping and have sleep-overs; will I be the one she cries dramatically to when her friends leave her out? Will she be good at sports? Will she inherit my family’s musical ineptitude or her father’s keen ear? Will I ever know? Can I dare to even imagine being there to help her pick out her wedding dress? 

All of those things in my life would have been lacking had I not had a loving mother to share them with. I hurt to realize the possibility I may create lack in her life. ...As I do that my sweet baby boy may grow into a young man I may not experience ...As I do that my dear husband, the only man I've ever loved, might need to move on to loving someone else someday. How does anyone ever accept these heartbreaking possibilities?

So tonight I sit with the tiny shoes. The reality of my daughter creeps through my guard as I dare to imagine her little feet slipping into those feminine soles. She does exist. So much after that may be uncertain, but she is real.

Words I Need to Hear

Bobby doesn't realize I need him to tell me this. And sometimes, I need him to tell me over and over.

 I tell him.

He writes it down for me.

Clipped Wings

A Christmas where I couldn’t quite lighten my heavy heart came and went. I tried not to let my family see the pervasiveness of my sorrow, but this is clearly shaping into a season of darkness. Hope and gratitude are slipping out of my tired fingertips.

With the passing of the holidays, we return back to our quiet house with bags to unpack and a fridge that needs filling. My medical appointments resume and welcome us right back into the fold that is our lives.

I meet with one doctor and discuss the recommendation that I have my ovaries removed. I reluctantly dismiss lingering hope for a future pregnancy and plan an oophorectomy (surgery to remove my ovaries) for the coming months. I meet with another doctor and have blood drawn from my ankle, because once again, my damaged veins will not spring forth for the prodding nurses. I revert back to my safety chant, “one, two, three” to help me through the failed attempts. 

I ask the Oncologist my odds for survival, in a grasping attempt for as much information as I can attain. After a long speech about the meaninglessness of odds, he tells me the numbers. I can’t stop hearing them: 80/20. 

The survival rate, the chance I will still be alive and cancer free in ten years, is estimated at 80%. Conversely, statistics indicate there is roughly a 20% chance this will not be over for me. Aggressive treatment and preventive measures aside, there remains a 20% chance breast cancer will show up somewhere else in my body over the next decade. 

I am trying to understand that I might die soon, and that I have to live with that.

Meanwhile, my friends’ lives are moving on. They have gone on to have second and third children. They are having baby showers and buying houses, changing jobs and taking trips. The contrast between life carrying on normally for them and my sphere of challenges is a painful reminder of what might have been. 

I long to be one of them again, to associate mortality with old age, to live without prevalent fear or pain, to be able to take things for granted. 

Instead, I find myself skittering around like a wounded bird. I can’t lift off the ground and empathy weighs heavy on my back, as though I’m suddenly in-tune with any suffering around me. The sadness of the world is too much to ache for.

I walked across the lobby of a medical building today behind a little girl wearing what was clearly a wig. She couldn’t have been but five or six, walking lightly toward the infusion suite and holding the hand of what must have been her daddy. How does any man deserve the pain that father must endure watching his baby go through chemotherapy? 

…How do I hold it together when I lose new friend after new friend from my support group?  …How do I continue to understand God as loving and gracious amidst trying to teach myself that the allowance of suffering is necessary on earth?

I’m just a little bird, fluttering around on the ground. It’s okay if I leave this life, I attempt to convince myself. Because I’m not sure how else to cope with 80/20 yet. 

Die-agnosis

We’re sitting in a waiting room of adorable, expectant couples, waiting to be called back and told I have breast cancer.

Time is suspended, as though I just moved out of my body into an ethereal aura of the surreal. My hands are shaking and I’m alternating between bouncing one knee and then the other. But my mind is still. I feel as though I’m watching myself sit there, watching my husband fidget anxiously in the chair next to me. I’m actually one of the pregnant women across the room.

There’s a tissue box on top of an ugly table in the corner. The tissue looks like an emerging white whale tail. I stare at it, letting my eyes get dry from not blinking. What’s happening to my life? Where can I possibly go from here?

When we’re finally called back, we sit across from the doctor in her office. I didn’t know she had an office. She shares all the information she has with us, in a soft, almost tentative manner. She looks like she’s expecting me to erupt into sobs at any moment. I do not. I stare back at her. Ask as many questions as I can think of. Nod my head. Glance at my husband. What is he thinking?

Inside, I’m floating away. There is a flutter of activity below me, but I am still – still in a vibrating darkness. There is the white whale tail. I see my 2-year-old’s face. I see my hazy perception of God’s likeness. Hope touches down in the darkness, ever so lightly.

 

We leave, to go home and try to tell my mother I have cancer.