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For six days, we eat chicken; on the seventh, we rest

Last time this year, I was undergoing chemotherapy, so I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing lately now that my hair is growing back, all fluffy.

I’ve also been reminiscing about my breast cancer surgery last August.

My mother came to town for the surgery and was an incredible help and support. She took care of two pretty frustrated twins, took them to swim lessons, tried to play with them, and endured some nasty behavior and nasty comments from them. [Note to self: two pre-schoolers whose mommy is in the hospital undergoing a radical surgery for cancer can have some POWerful emotions. And they will act accordingly.]

My mom cooked for us, cleaned up, took care of me, gave pep talks, whatever was required. She got us through the worst two weeks of my recovery. I’m not sure what we would have done without her.

After my mom left, my wonderful friend Lisa stepped in and coordinated a week of dinners for us because even though I was up and around, I was still pretty much useless as far as cooking or housework. Six people from my work (including Lisa) volunteered to bring dinner that third week post-surgery.

Each day, these generous and lovely women came to our home and delivered incredible, thoughtful, delicious dinners. And each dinner revolved around some form of chicken.

Every day, around the time that our friends were due to arrive, my husband and I wondered whether we’d be having chicken for dinner. Sure enough, the chicken would arrive.

In addition to receiving delicious chicken, each person would stay and visit for awhile. This was my favorite part of the whole week. One of the days, my friend Danäe brought Thai food, and we ate all together in front of the television watching something historic: Barack Obama received and accepted the nomination of his party to run for the presidency.

I have come to call this special week the “for six days, we eat chicken; on the seventh, we rest” week. I am overwhelmed with warm feelings and gratitude every time I think of that week and of the two weeks that preceded it, when my mom was here.

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Show and tell

So, this is kinda Relay for Life, part 2. If you’re done reading about my cancer or about the Relay for Life walk-a-thon, it’s OK with me if you stop here. But the Relay for Life was one of those experiences that keeps on giving, so there’s a little more to share.

Monday is the day that my daughters get to show-and-tell in the Kindergarten class. The Monday after Relay for Life, they took in the medals they got at the Relay. They’re big, chunky things emblazoned with big letters that spell out SURVIVOR.

(After the “Survivor’s Lap” around the track, the Relay organizers are there, putting medals on all the survivors, giving them care baskets and flowers. It’s overwhelming, weird and sweet. When I put my medal on Dinah and gave my flower to Djuna, Djuna instantly asked where her medal was. Just as instantly, a breast cancer survivor standing nearby whisked her medal off and swooped it onto Djuna, saying that she had two daughters too.)

When the girls wanted to take their medals in for show-and-tell, I decided to stay and watch.

When they had their turns, they both said that they received medals because they helped their mommy get better from cancer. When they said this, both of them stood up at the end and raised their arms in the air, triumphant.

You *so* know that I got all choked up. Who wouldn’t? And I couldn’t help thinking how crazy it was that most of the Kindergarten kids bring in toys, stuffed animals, little treasures like shells and starfish (and that’s what my kids bring in on most Mondays), but that my kids have to bring in big medals that say “survivor.”

I wasn’t sure what to think about that.  I felt bad about it, that my girls should have had to endure something so hard at such a young age.  But I also felt fiercely proud of them.

I wanted to clap for them, but that’s just not what everyone does after the kids show and tell. The other kids asked them questions, like, “What do you do with your medal when you’re not using it?” and so forth. Dinah and Djuna politely answered their classmates’ questions and then took their spots on the carpet.

I was humbled by the normalcy of the whole thing, the easy sharing, the easy flow of the normal spate of questions from 5 and 6 year olds. But I was also struck by the fact that my girls don’t really understand cancer or what it means. They know that I was sick, they know that I took strong medicine that made me tired and bald. They know I had an operation, that I was gone from the house for three days for the operation, that I have scars.

They don’t really know that cancer causes death, though. I dread the day that they realize that.  I am afraid for them to make the connection that I had a deadly disease, that anyone’s cancer can return, that sometimes people have to fight it again, that sometimes they cannot survive the disease.  I want to protect them from having to know this as long as I can, but I know I can’t do it forever, of course.

I know how true it is that they deserve medals for helping me get better. I hope I can help them understand that, too.

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Relaying for life

Yesterday, I went to the Relay for Life at UCLA. Typically, I donate money directly to the causes I especially care about, rather than participate in events.

I have heard lots about the Relay from family and a good family friend who have done the Relay for years, and I donated money when I could and looked forward to seeing the pictures from the event each year – the tents, the t-shirts, the team, the triumph, the luminarias.

But then I got cancer. My mom did a walk-a-thon last year, and my sister was considering one too. I wasn’t planning on doing the Relay until my step-brother, who goes to UCLA, told me that was going to be captain of a team, and he asked me to come participate.

I thought about it for awhile because I wasn’t sure how it would all feel; I finally decided that yes, it would be good to go, for about a million reasons.

The whole thing came so fast that I barely had time to get nervous or to think about how it would feel to take the “survivor’s lap” or to stand out as a cancer survivor in a big crowd of people. I thought about it a little, and I just didn’t know what to think, but then suddenly time was a-wasting, and I had to put a badge on my Facebook page to start fundraising!

I didn’t put out too many calls/e-mails for fundraising because so many people have already done so much to help me and my family through my year of treatment. On top of that, I wasn’t completely comfortable asking for money in these difficult economic times.

Putting a badge on my FB page helped me feel like I wasn’t targeting anybody specifically. I just used the status update a couple of times to let folks know that I was fundraising, and it brought in an amazing amount of money, fast. That, and some generous contributions from family when my sister (also a generous contributor) sent around the link to my Relay for Life page helped put me over $500 in just a week.

For anyone who has never been to a Relay before, the UCLA one took place in a large stadium on campus. The different teams had tents set up just inside the stadium’s track, right on the outer edges of the lawn. The middle of the lawn was open, and folks played croquet, frisbee, catch, etc.

Once the Relay started, there were always folks walking, trotting or running around the track. I left in the late afternoon, but there were plenty of folks there who were planning to stay the night, alternating between walking the track and sleeping.

My step-brother was captain of his team, and he brought a tent, sleeping bags, board games and more to keep the 24 hours comfortable and fun for all. He was a great host, and along with his girlfriend and my other step-brother, they all did their best to make me and my husband and our daughters feel welcomed and supported.

I received a purple t-shirt that said “SURVIVOR” on the back, so it was easy for event coordinators to spot me and call me over when there were events in the survivor’s section. They had food there, crafts, gifts and photo ops.

Sometimes I can’t even believe that I had cancer, so it’s very difficult to explain how it felt to be a part of the survivor’s group at the Relay. First of all, I can say that the volunteers who ran the event were incredibly kind and genuine. In fact, one of the volunteers was a former student who lost her father to cancer years ago.

Seeing her there, and also some of the other young people who lost parents to cancer, was powerful. My former student is a bright, capable, mature, sweet individual. To think that she came into her own while growing up without her father helps me come to terms with my fears.

None of my doctors (and I have several) has ever indicated to me that I have a negative prognosis. But there are no guarantees for those who have finished treatment for cancer, and I am well aware of this. So, it is very difficult for me to shake off the fear that I am just about to die from breast cancer. Of course, the worst part is fearing that I might not be there to raise my amazing, beloved daughters.

But seeing the folks there, all with their different cancer stories, made me face the fear and put a face on it. And the face wasn’t terrible; instead, it was the face of a former student, of one of the event speakers who lost her mother, of other young people at the event who have clearly been touched by cancer … children who lose a parent can grow up to be whole people, nice kids who go to college, have friends, passions, a good life.

While I don’t want to think of these things, I do. I have to face the fear in order to be present in the present moment. I have to come to terms with scary thoughts in order to be able to stare down the cold fear, everyday.

At the Relay, it was good to have a lot of warm hands reaching out, coaxing me to the other side of the chilliness.

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New normal, new body

A difficult part of life after cancer treatment has been getting used to my new body. The truth is that I’m not completely comfortable writing about this subject right now, so I am only going to outline the basics here.

I do feel comfortable saying that it’s weird and complicated and that my body is just, well, different. I have weird aches and pains that I don’t like to talk about much. What makes them weird is simply that they’re different from my pre-cancer body, which was also just a younger body.

It makes me think of one of my favorite folk tales, an Irish tale about the selchie, the seal maiden. In the luminous musical version we listen to with my daughters, there is a part when the seal is stranded on the sand and loses her seal skin. Then she turns into a human girl. She tries to swim back out to sea to retrieve her seal skin, but she cannot because she does not know how to work her new body.

Of course, the challenge is not only because I feel as though I have a new body. The real challenge is that every one of my new aches and pains feels like it must be cancer. It’s very difficult to deal with these aches and pains without worrying.

But I do try.

I went to dance class tonight (I take modern dance classes) and was so happy to see someone who hasn’t been to classes in years. She has been facing some very complicated health issues and only now has returned to class. I could tell that she was feeling frustrated during class, but she looked as lovely as she ever did, with gorgeous dancer’s fingers and hands, very natural and graceful.

Watching my friend make her way through class inspired me. And my teacher offered me spot-on corrections to get me through.

There are moments, during dance class, when I am happily lost in the movements and the music, and for a few seconds, I never had cancer. It’s thrilling. And then I return to myself, my new body, my new normal. And that’s OK too. It really is.

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A life, scrapbooked

This week some workers at my school found a treasure trove of scrapbooks in a house that is due to be razed to make room for a new campus building.

The house was left to our school in a will.  There is some sort of very involved story with the house … an alum of my school was married to a man, and she wanted the house left to the school.  She died and her husband remarried and lived in the house for many more years.  He and his second wife apparently committed suicide together because one of them was terminally ill.  When he died, the house was then left to the school, in accordance with the first wife’s wishes.

Now, I can promise you that I don’t have all the facts of this story straight, but I’ve got enough of them to know that the story is complicated, sad, romantic, very poignant.

The scrapbooks are mostly from travels in the 1980s and early 1990s, all meticulously prepared.  Ticket stubs, itineraries, menus, hotel stationery, post cards, photos, newspaper clippings, advertisements and much more, all labeled with an ink pen in a woman’s elegant handwriting.

Because the house will soon be leveled, our maintenance crew is cleaning it out completely.  They brought the 18 scrapbooks to the library (where I work), and our librarian put them on a cart and invited the community to come peruse them.

Normally, this would be stuff I’d love, but instead of being fascinated with them, they are freaking me out.  To see so many scrapbooks in one place, all of them there to be perused by strangers to the people who made them, depressed me.

Co-workers filed in and out of the library all day yesterday and again today.  They hoisted books of interest to library tables to flip through, vicariously enjoying trips to exotic locales.  Everyone was chatting about the extensive collection, about how many hours it took to assemble them.  Labors of love.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about how material things cannot possibly go with us when we die.  All the hours spent on those books, all the special memories compiled, just to be shared with people the travelers didn’t even know.  I thought of how my own to-do lists include reminders not only to create scrapbooks, but to sort through pictures, print pictures, edit family videos, post it all on the Internet.

What will happen to my recorded memories when I die one day?  Will my family enjoy them, or will they just be moldy old albums, interesting conversation pieces … is it a waste of time to record memories in pictures?  in albums? on tape?  Should we be spending more time experiencing life in the present moment instead of working so passionately to record it?

I think I was extra-sensitive about these scrapbooks because Monday was the three-year anniversary of my step-father’s death.  The scrapbooks made me remember holding my step-father’s hand after he died, as I looked around the room at all his treasured possessions, thinking that wherever he was going, he sure wasn’t taking all those books, photos, trinkets and decorations with him.  I couldn’t understand his death, but I could understand the this-world permanence of those objects hovering all around us.

I wanted to be happy about the moment the scrapbooks provided — it was actually kind of neat to see other teachers I haven’t chatted with in awhile, coming into the library, all of us sharing easy moments over objects of mutual interest.

When a fellow co-worker brought one of the albums back to the library, saying that it was making her office smell moldy, I knew I needed to call it a day.  I left work, stopping off to have coffee with a dear friend.  And then home to my family and some nice warm spaghetti.

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Random things about myself

So, I got tagged in one of those notes in Facebook, and I don’t usually find time to play along and respond.  But I had one second this morning and did it and thought it was fun.

1) Come up with 25 things about you, it does not matter what you pick as long as they are true.
2) You then have to tag 25 people, including the person who tagged you.  (I’m also posting this in Facebook, and I’m tagging people there.)
So, here goes:

1.) For over 20 years, I saved my Barbies and Barbie trunk, full of clothes, to pass on to my children, in case I decided to have children.  I lugged them from house to house, East Coast to West Coast.
2.) My children broke the Barbies the first time they played with them.
3.) In the 90s, I used to collect children’s picture books. I had a little note card for each book, detaling the themes and how the book would be useful in the classroom.  (Can you say “nerd?”)
4.) One of my closest friends wrote a wonderful picture book called The Giant Hug.
5.) The laptop I’m using doesn’t type the number five, so I always have to copy and paste it.  Sometimes password fields don’t accept a paste, so then I’m SOL.
6.) I’m using Facebook to get connected with some of my cousins in Spain and am therefore practicing my Spanish (in writing, at least)!  This is good because my checks turn hot and get very red every time I try to speak Spanish.
7.) Every day, I miss my grandmother.
8.) I didn’t always think I’d have kids, but I did think that if I were to have kids, that I’d have twins.  (and I did!)
9.) The album that turned me on to the Beatles was Revolver, and the album that turned me on to Bob Dylan was Blood on the Tracks.
10.) Once, and only for a short time, I was an auctioneer.
11.) I love Valentine’s Day and jangly bracelets.  They don’t have to be expensive.  Just jangly.
12.) I cannot stand coconut shavings or water chestnuts.
13.) When I put dirty dishes in the sink, I have a hard time remembering to put water in them, and it drives my husband crazy.
14.) I love to play games and do crafts with my daughters, but I’m not much good at make-believe games, even though I pretended a lot when I was little.
15.) In gym class as a kid, I was dangerous with any type of equipment, like field hockey sticks or lacrosse sticks.
16.) I take modern dance classes, and I want to learn to do flamenco.
17.) When I was in college in the late 80s, I was very happy with my electronic typewriter and did not understand the relevance of computers.  I thought it was a fad that would die.
18.) My favorite book is Stuart Little.
19.) Lately, my favorite song is The Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow,” but that could change, um, tomorrow.
20.) For a long time, I have been fascinated with the Civil Rights movement.  Lately, as I’ve been searching for a way to talk about Martin Luther King Day with my daughters, I have been learning a little more about Ruby Bridges.
21.) Sometimes, I think I enjoy my kids’ toys as much as they do.  Especially Playmobil.
22.) My husband and I can’t wait for the next Harry Potter movie to come out.
23.) I am a breast cancer survivor.
24.) When I had down-days during cancer treatment, it would cheer me up to think about the many ways that we are all inter-connected, how we all matter to each other.  For example, I am a mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, friend, teacher, writer/blogger/journalist, dancer, confidante, helper, lots of things … What are you?
25.) I am happy to be here.

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My girls have selected new names for themselves


My daughters’ names are of really special meaning to my husband and me.  Dinah’s name came from Louis Armstrong singing “Dinah, is there anyone finah, from the state of Carolinah, etc.”  There is also a much longer family story about Dinah’s name, but I’ll get into that another day.

And Djuna’s name came from a romantic escape my husband and I made to New York City on the day in December 1996 when the Woody Allen movie “Everyone Says I Love You” came out.  Natasha Lyonne plays the spunky lead character Djuna, and we fell in love with her, the name, the movie, the soundtrack, the day, the memory, everything.

So, you can imagine how I felt when, last night at the dinner table, my 5-year-old daughters announced to me that they hate their names and that they want different names.

The names they want?

Djuna wants to be called Crystal.

And Dinah wants to be called Sparkles.

Not only do we have to call them by these new names, they informed us, but we also have to tell everyone to call them by these names.

So, you’ve all been told.  Crystal and Sparkles, meet the internets.  Internets, meet Crystal and Sparkles.


Sparkles and Crystal, both California girls, examine snow from the sled ride at our local Christmas street fair.

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Tears for Obama, tears for my girls

When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me about the importance of equal rights for women.  I remember listening carefully but not completely understanding because it seemed, from my point of view as a kid in the 1970s, that women did have equal rights.

I took it for granted and figured that my mom must really be from another era to know of something so different than what I was experiencing.

One of the greatest things about Barack Obama becoming president is that my daughters will take it for granted that a man with brown skin can lead our country.  My daughters will grow up looking at Michelle Obama as a role model, and they’ll grow up envying Malia and Sasha Obama and their new puppy and wondering about them and their life growing up in the White House the same way that I wondered about Amy Carter.

And just like I didn’t think twice about seeing women have equal rights or about women working outside of the home, my daughters won’t think twice about seeing a brown-skinned family in power.

Even though I have concerns about Barack Obama (I think his rhetoric regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan is further to the right than even John McCain’s; I am concerned that he is pro-death penalty in certain cases; I don’t think he goes nearly far enough to guarantee the rights of gay people), I voted for him for other reasons.

I cried along with so many other people on election night to see Obama and his beautiful, young family in that park in Chicago, claiming victory on such a historic night.

And now it will be my daughters who will know that their mom really is from another era when she explains to them that there was a time when she couldn’t have imagined that an African-American would be elected president in her lifetime.

I couldn’t be more excited at the thought that my daughters will think I’m that old-fashioned.

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Adieu, sweet prince

Today we said goodbye to a family friend, the beloved dog of one of my closest friends.


Sweet Sam

We don’t have a pet.  We had some fishies for awhile, but we found it impossible to keep the tank clean. That, and Mr. Hubs doesn’t like to read directions or signage, and he inadvertently got a suckerfish that was actually for a tank double the size of ours.  The beast grew to the size of one of Mr. Hubs’ shoes and did nothing but suck the paint off all the tank decorations and crap long streams of skinny poo all over the tank, all the time.  Plus it scared the bejesus out of me, the thought that one day I’d lift the tank to sprinkle fish flakes in there, and I’d see the suckerfish, with its head sticking out of the water.  I imagined that I’d look close to see that the thing was finally growing land-lungs.

(Here, I pause to shudder as I recollect the horrible suckerfish.)

So I told Mr. Hubs to take care of things humanely, and when I came home one day, the problem was taken care of, and I don’t know anything more than that.

Our girls are true animal lovers, and we’ve told them that one day we’ll live somewhere where we can have a proper dog or cat.

In the meantime, they fell in love with my friend’s dog, a sweet, handsome yellow Labrador, a real prince.  He was always a perfect gentleman with my girls, a perfect dog for little girls to pet and to stuff with dog treats and to pester in that way that only little kids can pester a dog.  My family told me that I used to pester Walter, my grandparents’ yellow lab, just the same way, and he never flinched or complained.

After my heartbroken friend told me the news this afternoon, I thought about how we’d break the news to Dinah and Djuna.  I called my sister and asked her for the name of two children’s books about death, figuring I’d pick them up at the bookstore on the way home.  She read them to her son when we had a death in the family back in 2006, and I keep meaning to ask her for the titles …  But she was at work and didn’t know the titles off-hand and said she’d get them to me tomorrow.

So, we had to wing it.  I hope we did OK.

We told Dinah and Djuna just what my friend wanted us to tell them, that Sam just got so old that his body gave out.  They were very sad about it, and it broke my heart to have to tell them and to see them cry.  After a little while, they asked for Daddy to print out pictures of Sam for them to color so they could make my friend a card.  They colored dog pictures for the better part of the evening.

Today, on the day we lost Sam, we discovered that the pumpkin seeds are growing.  These aren’t just any pumpkin seeds.  These are seeds my girls planted a week ago, during our pumpkin carving afternoon, with my friend’s help.  The seeds are planted in an impossible spot beneath a fence, but my daughters were so excited about the whole project that they called it their “secret pumpkin patch.”


Giant, gooey pumpkin innards, and lots of seeds!


Planting the secret pumpkin patch under a fence.


Cleaning up

One of those impossible seeds has sprouted into a mighty seedling.  We think it is in honor of sweet, sweet Sam that the secret pumpkin patch has sprung to life.

Seems fitting, somehow.

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Whazzat?! Whazzat?!

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Now, my family doesn’t believe in the Great Pumpkin, exactly, but we do love to watch the Peanuts cartoon about Linus and his undying faith in the Great Pumpkin.  (My favorite moment in all of cartoondom is when Linus is in the pumpkin patch keeping vigil for the appearance of the Great Pumpkin.  When Snoopy rises up, a silhouette in the darkness, Linus’ hair stands up on end as he is overcome and cries out, “Whazzat?!  Whazzat?!” just before he collapses in a faint.)

All I can say is that we must have a pretty sincere pumpkin patch, because the Great Pumpkin came to our house last night.

It’s all because of Auntie Dawn.

Let me explain.

Dinah came to me on Thursday morning and said, “I wonder what the Great Pumpkin will bring me as I sleep tonight.”

I said, “But Dinah, the other day you said you didn’t believe in the Great Pumpkin.”

She said, “But AUNTIE DAWN sent us something from the Great Pumpkin, and now I believe.” (Auntie Dawn, my husband’s twin sister, sent the girls cards and stickers and Halloween bracelets made by her oldest daughter.)

So, I want to publicly thank Auntie Dawn for restoring my daughters’ faith in the Great Pumpkin (and for making us scurry out to get Halloween presents so that we don’t disappoint our daughters on Halloween morning, that most blessed of all mornings).

The hubs (who told me yesterday, after reading my post, told me, “It’s Mr. Hubs to you”) went out and bought our daughters a little something, a couple of pets from the Littlest Pet Shop collection (another tradition we can thank Auntie Dawn for).  He put the new pets in the middle of the coffee table, innocently there among the pets left there last night.

The girls were so excited about Halloween that they came into our bedroom to climb in with us (and to horrify us with their little icicle feets) at 5:30 am.  They were absolutely wriggling, unable to fall back asleep.  But then Mr. Hubs put a fan on for a little white noise, and they collapsed back into sleep until it was time to get up and go downstairs to see if the Great Pumpkin had visited.

He had.

Here’s to the Great Pumpkin (and Auntie Dawn)!  Happy Halloween!