The Party Girl's Guide to Cancer

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 mea...

  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...

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 ...