Cancer sucks.

Alas!  I am a terrible blogger lately.  Believe me, it isn't for lack of things to say - it is mostly for lack of time to write, because of me putting other things and people first, and for general happiness all around.

The move back to our house generated quite a few other changes as well.  We have a new roommate - Jennifer - who came with her two feline children Omar and Poncho.  All in all, it's been a pretty smooth adjustment that has meant more love and friendship in my life.

In a few days it will be October - the leaves will start falling and everyone will start wearing pink again.  October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and it always makes me sad.  Usually at some point I come to tears.  You see, I lost someone very special nearly 6 years ago now - my sweet Aunt Sharon.

She was first diagnosed at age 31 I believe, in 1989, and went through lots of chemo, radiation, and a full mastectomy.  Awful for her for sure, and awful for my 14 year old brain too.  Fifteen  years after her first diagnosis, her cancer comes back as osteosarcoma (probably a result of all that radiation) and turns deadly.  We tried to save her - including two trips to Houston's MD Anderson hospital, but she couldn't withstand the chemo regimen they needed her to go through and she stopped after only 2 or 3 treatments.

When she died my grief was immeasurable.  I plowed my face into my pillow and screamed - beating the bed with clinched fists in my heart's utter torment.  It was just awful - she was only 48 years old.  She had grandchildren she wanted to play with, and she had children who still needed her even though they were grown.  I still needed her; we all did.

I finally got up the nerve to go back to her house this past Sunday - to visit my cousin there where she now lives, to be in that space again where I always remember my Aunt Sharon living.  Her touches are still there, very viable - still very present.   But I did not feel her spirit there anymore and I can only hope that means that she is at peace with her passing, that she is carefully watching over us from beyond what we can know about yet.

Several days before I dreamed of her - she and I and my cousins sitting in that very living room.  Perhaps she is the one who visited me in my dream and suggested that I go ahead and go.  She must know that I have grieved a million times for her, have cried oh so many tears because of the injustice of it all, have wanted to ask her a thousand questions, and have wanted to show her my child.

So I went, and I didn't even cry.  I took Jennifer with me - and she was up to the task of being just the ears I needed to hear my thoughts that day.  And I hope, through all of the space and time, that there was another soul out there hearing about how much I still love and miss her.  This one's for you Aunt Sharon!

Reflection.

My commute is now about 7 minutes.  It used to be a minimum of 25.  You guessed it, I'm back in my house in Athens.  Thank God.  Today I visited the little country house nearly one month after we left and the only thing I found that I missed was the feeling that my grandmother's spirit might be out there amongst the trees.  She loved that little spot - it was the best thing she ever had.  I wonder if this spot here in Athens is my little place, my nest, my refuge from life's storm.  Could be.  All I know is that the instant we got things cleaned up and began to put our things back in the house, hang our pictures back on the walls, cut the grass, and cook a meal - I felt better all over.  A quiet sense of peace.
I really don't miss the country.  Maybe I miss the proximity to my father's place and his gigantic oak trees that must be 200 years old.  Or the sounds of the creek below my grandmother's house.  The baby geese that we got to watch grow over the course of the Spring.  Maybe I miss that feeling of really being in the place where I grew up.  But here it is my life I'm living, starting fresh and new, but not forgetting all that I could have lost in those spaces in between - the place I always belonged.  I'm really thankful for that time I had to spend out there in that tiny little hot/cold house.  I'm thankful for all of the memories I regained while in that space: the way my Granny looked standing at the stove with her apron on and her spatula in hand (I can smell the bacon frying), the ancient echos of my childhood laughter when my Uncle Keith and I used to squirt each other with the water hose, Granny reciting the poem about leaves falling in the wind, and all of the times our family gathered there to eat and laugh and love.
No life is perfect.  No life is without pain and sacrifice.  But I've also found that no life is without tender moments of real peace and love and laughter and minutes you'd like to bottle up and save for later so you'd never forget what it felt like when they happened.  What I would give now to lay my head in Granny's soft lap and feel her long slender fingers course through my hair.  What I would give to be a child again swinging mightily on the tire swing my father hung from the limb of that giant oak tree.  What I'd give to hold my baby brother in my arms again.  And wouldn't we all love to know then what we know now?

Leaving

Things are not always what they seem.
Your face in the shadows, once in the moonlight, now gone.
Sometimes I still see you there when you want to be.

What is this mess we've made?
It is like a pink rubber ball bouncing rapidly down a steep, dark slope.
Fresh at once then losing speed until it rolls no more.

You have been my heaven and my in-between.
But as you fade away I know this will not be
everything I thought it could.

Still I reach for you in the night.
Someday I hope you may return to me
and be a warm welcome against my cold skin.

My soul awaits yours and I will try to live fully.
Surely it cannot be much longer
until we finally get it right.

It is you my love.

I knew you a hundred years ago
I saw you walking on those cold
grey cobblestones which fit so perfectly together.

You walked there in the crevice of my mind
and in the years since my longing for you deepened
into something I shall know as love.

When I saw you again I did not know you.
It was my soul that whispered, he's here.
After all this time, I know it is you.

Easy to smooth the painful cries of long ago,
tears that fell on cold window panes
and handkerchiefs not embroidered with loose change.

Easy it is now to look into your eyes
beautiful, brown, knowing who I am from the start.
I am limp when you reach for me underneath the stars.

It is okay my love.  No need to wait any longer.
This time we will not be denied what we could not have then.
Let us live a thousand more years warmed in the light of the sun.

I Will Come To You

When you have no light to guide you
And no one to walk to walk beside you
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

Sometimes when all your dreams may have seen better days
And you don't know how or why, but you've lost your way
Have no fear when your tears are fallin'
I will hear your spirit callin'
And I swear I'll be there come what may

When you have no light to guide you
And no one to walk beside you
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

I will come to you

'Cause even if we can't be together
We'll be friends now and forever
And I swear that I'll be there come what may
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

We all need somebody we can turn to
Someone who'll always understand
So if you feel that your soul is dyin'
And you need the strength to keep tryin'
I'll reach out and take your hand

I'll reach out and take your hand

Oh I will come to you
When you have no light to guide you
And no one to walk to walk beside you
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you
When the night is dark and stormy
You won't have to reach out for me
I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

Oh I will come to you
Oh I will come to you

I will come to you,
Oh I will come to you

Hanson

The Recession's long shadow.

The Atlantic Monthly had an article about the recession and unemployment in America.  I hope everyone will read this article.  Hal has been out of meaningful work for over 2 years now.  It's very hard on families when one of the couple is involuntarily out of work.  Depression and divorce sky-rocket.  Here's the link: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/how-a-new-jobless-era-will-transform-america/7919/

Of cucumbers and mid-life crises.

I've felt cramped lately, like I need to escape my life.  Wonder if this is normal?  I am after all, 35.  Isn't it time for a mid-life crisis?  Is this where I'm supposed to make some dramatic change to keep up the inertia that will take me to 70?

Pickle season is nearly over.  The cucumber plants are slowing down, but justifiably so since they've born hundreds of cucumbers.  They are nice long round pretty things.  I held one in my hands the other day and marveled at just how pretty it was.  Sarah had an especially gigantic one in her lap the other day, a little cloth wrapped around it.  I asked, "what are you doing?"  She replied, "Mama of course I'm holding my baby's baby."  Duh.  I suppose her actual baby doll off to the side had given birth to this here plump cucumber, one side cream-colored toward the sun.

My job is wonderful.  I am working too many hours, which I think is the reason for my hum-drum, but damn what a satisfying job I have.  Too bad I cannot write about it here.  The range of emotions I feel in a 12-hour shift would jolt most of you for days.  It did me at first too.  But now I thrive on it if it doesn't kill my spirit.  It's a delicate balance, you see.

My child is growing up too fast.  When she was a baby I dreamed of the day when she'd be big enough to do things own her own, and now that she mostly is - the whole thing scares the shit out of me.  I threaten to go off to college with her.  Hal gives me weird glances.  He knows I actually could do that if I wanted to.  I could get some job at her college and watch over her there but I won't.  And besides, that's 13 years away.  But the first 5 flew by.  Especially those dark and dreamy nights when I just held her in my arms and rocked her to sleep; the smell of her soy milk breath wafting under my nose.  Her baby sighs.  Gosh.

And marriage.  Isn't that a hard one to figure?  The yo-yo up and downs of life that you try to pull through together.  Sometimes our bond feels like cement, other times it's more like silly putty.  Perhaps that is the way it was meant to be.  No one can be head-over-heels in love 24/7 forever.  I am, but I'm not.  He is, but he isn't.  We are, but we cannot be, not all the time.  Sometimes when he sleeps I run my fingers through his hair and kiss his forehead but he doesn't know it.  Sometimes I stare at him and envy the fact that he can sleep so easily, but I cannot.

In a few hours I think I'll take off somewhere.  Blow off some steam.  Lick my wounds, chase my tail, and just drive like a bat out of hell.  Perhaps to the ocean.  Maybe I'll even jump in.