a new era

Rubbing my back, as he does every morning (you can be filled with envy, it's allowed), Rich says that this is the beginning of a new era.

Time tripping, we are.  Each surgery, radiation, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, countless pains coming and going -- we're zooming from trilobite to homo sapien sapien so fast...

Today, new chemotherapy: Tarceva.  Who creates these names?  Does this sound like a cancer poison?  More likely a new hybrid sedan, or face cream, or a chef's signature dish:  Chordoma sous Tarceva.

Not everything moves forward.  Yesterday a letter from insurance company, unwilling to pay $100,000-plus radiation bill because it is "experimental."  Isn't this all?  Anyway -- this was approved, we were told, by Sloan Kettering folks.  After expelling some bile, we wait and see.

But even if it's raining today, it is Spring, and the days are getting longer and warmer and we've survived -- lived! -- another winter.

How good is that?

Candace

class picture

It gets worse.  Not only did I join my high school Facebook, I found a link to my elementary school photos.  

Yes.  Elementary school.  Black and white group picture, grade 6-4 of P.S. 194, Mrs. Lewis, who taught us to think and have opinions and not take crap from anyone (she was a senior teacher, tenure secured).

I showed it to Rich.  

He couldn't find me.

You've been with me for 35 years and you don't know who I am?

Which raises all sorts of thoughts, including the most basic, and the most difficult, and most comforting.

We change, physically.  That's the easy part.  

But I easily recognize the 11-year-old who knew that what she was learning -- even from a semi-iconoclast teacher -- could not explain the bewildering world.

She is getting closer.  Maybe looking at her early years will remind her how far she has come -- and has to go.

Candace

forever young

I don't know what possessed me.  Maybe it was Rich talking about his upcoming 40th (!) high school reunion, which in turn triggered recollections of friends I haven't seen in about as many years.

So I went searching the Internet.  And found a website dedicated to those from my high school who died on September 11.  Not surprising that there were too many names; I came from a large school with about 5,000 students, and a good number of them remained in New York.

The creator of the website -- a graduate a year before me, I think -- decided to use the page as a necrology for all alum, with emphasis on my cohort.  Slowly, I scanned.  It was, as I said, a big school; I surely didn't know everyone.  What were the odds?

First, Joseph.  Joseph!  A purely nice guy with a broad smile who played the trumpet really well...we drove to our graduation together, and afterward had a party at his parent's apartment. 

Then Jill, a class beauty, taken by cancer.  Then Judith, oh no...the older sister of my best friend in whose home during my high school years I spent more time than my own.  

More and more names.  This one of cancer, when she was nineteen; that one of cancer, he was the brightest of the bright; this one drowned in her suburban swimming pool.  

And -- oh -- Miss Hymowitz, my favorite gym teacher, just out of college when she came to us and very, very cool.  One day, deep into my senior year when classes no longer mattered, my friend (Judith's sister) and I went to the beach, where we saw Miss Hymowitz...I won't tell if you won't, she said, and we didn't, though we all ended up with lobster skin sunburns that were tough to explain the next day.

Forever they are young, and in seeing them I am, too.  We were all going to end the war (Vietnam, then) and never be part of the military-industrial complex or any institution.  We cancelled our prom and instead attended protests and had class trip to "Hair."  But we never imagined death or cancer or living (drowning!) in a suburb with a swimming pool.

The war that shaped our lives did end.  "Hair" is in revival.  I live in a quasi-suburb (no swimming pool, but a lawn).  And there is still so much time.

Candace

  

more options

Heather's comment (see "kefir options") kindled a few more thoughts.

Narrowing options are, I have always secretly felt, the gift of illness and aging.  "Secretly" because we (or at least I) think must be busy with multiple faces, responsibilities, always going somewhere.  Perhaps this is why I have always been attracted to a quasi-monastic discipline (exempting early mornings, celibacy, obedience, and a few other things).  In the diminishing, there is peaceful growth, and what is accomplished may not be broader, but is often deeper.

This cold, for example, which has blossomed into a multi-week sport.  I have not left the house for four days, except for a couple of necessary and brief errands two days ago.  Rich -- yes, the man with cancer and a cold -- has gone to work, shopped, and just arrived home, still wearing a tie and nice cords.  Me?  I changed out of pajamas only because I needed the warmth of long underwear.

But -- I've done the most (and perhaps) best writing I have in several months.  Because I'm too wiped out to hike or bake or plan a garden or do chores.  I'm in joyful communication with friends via the internet and phone (even with neighbors; I want to keep my germs to myself).  I just finished listening to a Prokofiev violin concerto, one I never heard before, and realized it has been months since I listened to anything musical. 

And I'm enjoying the aging piece.  Enormously.  Previous decades -- I won't even consider the teens  -- were a vortex of questions.  What do I do with my life?  And with whom?  And how often?  What about the past -- can I escape?  And the future -- where will I go?  

This age, at last, has more answers than questions.  Or maybe only one answer.

It's good.  It's all good.

Candace

kefir options

I'm lifting a carton of kefir out of the dairy cooler.  Next to me, a woman looks unhappy.  Her favorite flavor and brand is out of stock.  In front of us are twelve options.  Of kefir, not exactly part of the Standard American Diet, or even the Enlightened American Diet.  Kefir is a fermented milk product that is highly populated with probiotics, living organisms that keep our gut happy.  It tastes good, too.

So we peruse the cartons of organic, non-organic, low-fat, full-fat, plain, red raspberry, peach...none will do, not for her.

I have preferences too.  Even my cat prefers red raspberry kefir to plain, except when plain is all there is and then, if he's hungry enough, or adventurous enough, he will eat it.  Which makes him a more advanced being than most humans (including this one) who piss away their lives in fear of what-has-not-been-explored.  Which is the definition of "alive."

Which is not what I've felt this week.  The tenacious cold has returned, plugging up my nose and draining my energy.  In these moments, exploration be damned; I want a return to "routine" (huh?) and "normal" (huh?)

Which kefir did I choose?  The one with the latest expiration date.

"Get the one with the most life," I told my dubious companion at the cooler.  "The probiotics are dying as we speak."

We are, after all, what we eat.

Candace

a quick cold note

While waiting for the radiation effects to appear, Rich has been hit with another treasure:  A vicious form of my cold, settling into his lungs and producing basso profundo coughing fits worthy of Boris Gudonov.  He has also been sleeping during the day, a rare event even on the worst of days.

But we're home.  I'm writing some, again.  Practicing, again.  Eating good local winter veggies, again.  None of this will last, but all of this is better than being stuck in the toilet.  I remember this, and laugh.

Candace

out of the toilet

This was not my first time.  Tenth, probably, and never a problem.  But this time, the lock on the bathroom door in my favorite Manhattan bistro wouldn't turn to open.  Press in, to the left, that's how it always moves, but nothing...

I considered how long I could survive.  Plenty of water, for sure.  A place to eliminate.  And, having finished dinner, food to keep me going for many hours.

Still.  This space wasn't much bigger than a coffin.  And I had nothing to read.

So I banged on the door.  Hard.  Several times.

Rich and a friend who had joined us for the evening were, fortunately, sitting near the door.

The waiter said he couldn't do anything from the outside.

Rich told me to turn, turn, turn.

"I can't do it for you," he said, and walked away.

Shit.

No.  Think.  That would be more productive.

Press the lock.  Softly, slowly, with calm and assurance of the outcome, turn -- to the right.

My companions show no surprise when I rejoin them.

Pretty good metaphor, no?

Or, at least -- I'll be careful about locking any doors I can't open.

Candace