Posts

What's that Hallmark B.S. About God Giving You as Much as You Can Handle?

Image
Merryl and I at my 40th Birthday party I usually have some glib opening line to annual Christmas Letter to pitch it low and slow, and swing hard at the zinger of some entertaining misfortune-of-the-year, with your heroine spinning a tale of personal drama, fleeting despair, and the final surge of determination that leads to triumph.  Not this time. My sister Merryl died the first week of May.  I have no words for the way this feels.  My brother-in-law Stuart called with the news as we’re headed to the beach.  I didn’t hear him at first.  The information would not pierce my consciousness.  “What?”  He repeats.  “Merryl died?”.  And again.  “She died, as in for real she died?”  Once more.  Both real and unreal. Eerily, her last text message to me read, “I DIED!”.  She was not well that week, had collapsed in her neighbor’s apartment, and was revived by EMTs at the hospital.  She walked home, feeling better, after being bored there two nights.  Merryl had a flair for the dramatic.  Not th

Goddess of my Galaxy

Image
I finally took down the Christmas cards that were sent to me for 2020, held to my electrical panel door with magnets.  I saw the chaos they projected on Zoom and also like a tree that has not been taken down, may be a reflection of my deteriorating concept of time and space.  I scan t he ones with kids and families and look back so I can see them growing year after year.    There are some that are really pretty that I recycle the fronts if the backs aren't written on.    There are others that I save, like the custom or hand made ones.  I saved most of my "cancer cards".    They are in a box with my family and friends’ photos and other crap I can't let go of. I thought about my own card and letter, which I do every year.  It was really important for me not to complain about what a shit year this was, even though I thought my mother might die at one point.   I also chose the photos for my Christmas card, like the one where we are dressed up for an online party, because

In My Dreams...

Image
Tears flowed freely down my face today. I'm driving home from work and have a memory of my father.  Or was it a dream.  Or was it a visit. My father used to visit me - when I was awake or when I was asleep.  It was not a dream.  I would dream of my father - a character in my dream.  I would say, "I had a dream about my father last night".  The dreams were clearly dreams. Then there were the visits.  He would visit my in that space where I was not asleep and not awake but conscious.  I could still register the goings on around me but I wanted to be unconscious and that's where he would be. Shortly after he left the Earth, I would feel him close.  He was very close.  He was still tethered to me or life or something.  I could feel his presence, almost at will. I would feel the surge of energy and of love.  The electricity of a life that was so connected to mine would flow, the force whose life was the cause of mine. That feeling came today in the mindspace when you'r

I'm going to make six weeks of 2020 sound exciting!

Image
Every year, when I write this letter, I think, “Maybe next year will be less dramatic.  Maybe my life will finally stabilize.  I don’t have to top myself every year.”.  Certainly, cancer was not the way I wanted to top myself in 2018.  In 2019, I traveled every month, was in 9 countries, a dozen states, and acted as if I  was just released from prison, having cheated death.  2020 will be the year I settle down, I said.  2020 will be the year I stay put, I said   Maybe 2020 is the year I focus inward, reflect, write more and find peace.  Be careful what you wish for. Staying home in 2020 was a matter of life and death.   AND it drags on.  I’m catching up on my cancer blog.  I see the COVID-19 reflected on my scale from too much staying put.  I’ve worn a path in the floor from the laptop to the fridge to the toilet to the bed.  My Google travel map is a 5-mile square area.  There are a few things I’ve been meaning to do for years, like start selling that box of stuff I moved from Fort Co

California, here I come, right back where I started from

Image
  I was a Californian before I was born. My mother was raised in Long Beach and attended Scripps College in Claremont.  She became an East Coaster through her Danforth Scholarship and wound up getting her Master's at Columbia while my father was at the Law School.  My parents were married in 1958 in the back garden of my Grandparents' house. California was that back garden in my mind with fragrant gardenias and putting green worthy turf.  I remember waking up for breakfast at my grandparents' and running out the back door to pick oranges from the tree to slice in half and grind down into juice on the electric reamer.  I never had orange juice that wasn't frozen in a can and defrosted into an old glass milk jug.  This was magic - like a dream.If you lied on the grass it would cradle you like a bed of moss, hearing mourning doves in the trees.  We didn't visit from New York often, but I can recall every moment  in Nana's garden.   The last time I thought about the

London Calling and Teenage Kicks

Image
Running around like a sailor on shore leave doesn't seem to be enough within the contiguous United States.  I haven't been to London or anywhere out of the country aside from Toronto in a couple of years and it seems another life, a geological age, 2000 or more years. My life B.C. is like a dream. Nothing feels the same and I am experiencing everything with new eyes.  I have a get out of jail free card.  Kevin is coming with me as he's never been to the UK.  April, my friend since I was 14, will join for a week and we will be there for her birthday.  Emma will be in the UK for a couple of weddings, so we can all have an adventure together.  Real World London style. My good friend Martin's wife Kate also has cancer, and her prognosis is not good.  Rather than torture herself with further treatments, she's facing the inevitable with the common sense and humor the British are famous for.   Keep calm and carry on.  She's having a going away party and I want to be th