I'm trying to tell you something 'bout my life

—

I sometimes wonder if in some other reality, one of my kids has cancer. I sit at their bedside, begging God to let me have cancer instead. And in this reality, I am my answered prayer.

—

The other week Wren and I were away on a girls trip. We stayed at the Madonna Inn. The pool is nicer than I expected and heated. It overlooks San Luis Obispo. The first evening I sat in the crowded hot tub holding up my fingers each time Wren did a handstand in the water, rating it on a scale of 1-10. “Mom! Did you see that one?” “Mom, watch!” “That was at least an 8, right?” "Mom! Mom! Mom!" A woman watched on. After a bit she asked - just loud enough that everyone heard - “how old is your granddaughter?” Silence. “Well, my daughter is 12.” The whole hot tub turned into a pool of second hand embarrassment.

It’s fine. Whatever. I’m old. Chemo has aged me. My hair is thinning. I cut it thinking that would help. Now it’s just short and thinning. And I’ve gained 15 pounds. Who gains weight on chemo? (Turns out it’s not uncommon.) Not gonna lie, when I first found out, one of my first thoughts was, I mean, I wouldn’t mind losing 20 pounds... Apparently there is no end to my vanity.

—

A few days later, some kid texted Cash’s girlfriend, “Hey, heads up, I just saw Cash with a blonde girl at Trader Joes.” His girlfriend wrote back, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was his mom.” “No, it definitely wasn’t a mom…”

—

Getting cancer is a lot like being pregnant. You feel low key bad. You need naps. You start to not recognize yourself. Mostly though you go about your life. Meanwhile, your body is making ears, fingers, brains. You do your best to push out all the fears. You hold your breath as they search for the heartbeat. You say a prayer before getting blood test results. And when it's good news you feel incredible relief.

But it’s all false positives really. There’s no test that can predict addiction, mental illness, a car accident. Illness. Things I don’t even want to type into existence. Things that thank God you can’t predict because no one would ever have a baby. And we’d never know that we’d face it all again just to have loved them once. You were a baby once. And there was never any guarantee.

—

No one wants cancer. We go straight to the worst of it. But there is another story. Of hope. Ironically, of healing. Of love and being loved. Of a new future being knit together while you sleep. For me, a challenge is to stay right in the hot present center of all of it, where the stories and metaphors melt away. Where there is no past or future or fear. Just this momentary gift. Forever and ever, Amen.

—

I’m not brave. I’m scared of spiders. Needles. The dark. I almost fainted watching Bracket get stitches. Once I woke up to a small fire from a candle I left on in my Sausalito apartment. I immediately ran outside yelling “run for your lives!” and “save yourselves!” While my friend who was staying with me calmly got up, wet a towel and put the minor flames out. I’m not proud of this. And, I’ll never live the story down.

—

I have my first surgery on Monday where they'll remove the cancerous tissue in my colon and what's left of the original tumor. I’m a bit nervous. But it turns out I am also brave. It’s a new story I tell myself. I deal with needles all the time and it’s no biggie. I have been incredibly lucky so far and have no reason to believe I won’t continue to be. I remind myself I am an answer to my own desperate prayer.

—

I wrestle with how to tell the story. There is no clear narrative. It’s all true. None of it’s all true. The truth is there's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.