Just Another Damn Thing to be Strong About

Blog

  • Christmas Day

     

    Christmas to me was always my parents. We’d open gifts together and share a meal. Mostly Mom would cook, but sometimes we would break from tradition.  Once we ate in Cripple Creek, which I thought would be weird, but we were together, so it wasn’t. When I had my own kids, I thought I should have my own traditions. So I added getting ice cream on Christmas Eve before looking at lights, and going to the movies on Christmas Day after dinner. But most of the time mom and dad joined in on those traditions too. So the first Christmas I had without my parents, the kids and I fled to New York City. We took the train out to catch the Staten IsIand ferry to see Lady Liberty; we grabbed lunch in Chinatown and ate at a large table with strangers; we walked through Times Square; and then ended the evening with a show on Broadway. It was so unlike Christmas, that I could
    forget what it was actually Christmas.

    On the 26, six months after my parents died, the kids and I took the train to Coney Island. We took a tour of the neighborhood and walked on the empty boardwalk and threw red roses into the ocean to remember and honor my parents.

    Last year, we headed to Chicago and Hamilton, and Navy Pier, and Second City.

    This year with a malignant neoplasm hanging on to my ovary, And ongoing fatigue the that I can’t shake, I didn’t run away from Christmas. I put up the tree and hung the ornaments that my mother saved from my childhood. I bought gifts and gave to less fortunate. I looked at lights and stopped for ice cream.  And for the first time ever, I joined James and his family for the holiday.

    His mother has worked endlessly to give  us a memorable Christmas. She does a theme every year.  It was Harry Potter this year. Treacle tarts. Pumpkin pasties. Other amazing food. Fun Harry Potter gifts.  Brooke and Lily, James’s nieces are still young enough to be excited about presents and unpretentious and unspoiled enough  to be grateful for what they received. Shayne is able to maintain in a social setting and Darian is joining activities and hugged Brooke goodbye. Mostly I am happy and honored to be welcomed warmly in a family that is not my own.

    Tomorrow, I begin the process of figuring out what comes next with my ovary. It’s hard not to be scared. But if I have learned anything in the past years, it is that I will get through it and there will be lots of love on the way.

    Merry Christmas to my family and friends.

  • First blog post

    First blog post

    Blogging seems like one of those trendy things writers do now days. Sort of like how writers used to write in cafes in Paris, or lock themselves away in a garret.  I’ve never been in a garret, but I’d sort of like to try one out sometime.  My garret would be fully equipped with electricity and Wi-Fi though, and maybe a sunken, Calgon-take me away tub.  I’d write of course, but I’d also look out my window and hopefully have an amazing view of the ocean, or the mountains, or even a field where coyotes hunt field mice in the early morning dew.  I had a view like that once, when I lived off I25 halfway between nowhere.  I’d wake up early and stand next to my bedroom window and watch the coyotes search for their breakfast, before making my own.  At night, I’d sit out on my porch and watch the lights on the highway drift by.

    The past months I have written a lot.  It’s cancer.  I haven’t heard that nesting is a side effect of cancer, but it might be, because I have had a frantic urge to do that too.  Breast cancer hasn’t been that big of a deal for me.  I think for some women it’s a life changer, for me, it was more like another damn thing to be strong about.  And I got a boob job.  I HIGHLY recommend that.  I  had no idea plastic surgeons were so amazing.  But finding out that I have something on my ovary.  That’s a bigger deal.  Much more murky and terrifying.  I keep thinking, well, maybe it will turn out to be okay.  But just in case, I better get the house paid off and figure out plans for the kids, and get to the beach one last time and ride a horse drawn carriage in Central Park and all those things that I thought I would have plenty of time for in my life.

    So I am working on a memoir, but it’s bordering on fiction because I just can’t help clean up the messiness of my life.  Today I wrote about my parents visiting me when I lived in the apartment on Huron in Northglenn.  I miss them so much, but sometimes I’m so glad they aren’t here to watch the events of the last years.  There is no way my dad could have handled watching me be in pain.  So even though I’m not spiritual or religious, sometimes I think mom and dad were taken so they could help me in ways they couldn’t while they were on Earth.  I feel them with me everyday.  It’s how I stay strong.