I suppose it is the ultimate in tacky and that Utah probably would not recover...but I am seriously thinking of throwing myself a Cuarenta y Cinconera party next summer for my 45th birthday.
Let me explain...I attended my first Quincenera a year ago. Seriously, the Disney Princesses have nothing on the quinceaneras (teenage young women) South of the Border. These ladies, at the celebratory age of fifteen, are welcomed into womanhood with the party to end all parties! To be honest, I think my parents might have forgotten to celebrate my 15th birthday (happens fairly regularly in a large family). But in all fairness my family wouldn't have known what to do. Stupid Anglo-Saxons.
Why can't I be part of a hertitage that knows how to party?! I realize that the Bostonian residents of 1773 were trying to make the best of a bad situation, but was their Tea Party the best the Colonial English could do? Parties aren't even supposed to be violent (until two dashing men are fighting over the same woman of course). And although the wasting of a lot of valuable commodity (ever seen the amount of painstakingly created food at a quincenera eaten by non-appreciative Norteamericanos?) seems a bit over the top, it is clear to me that the Colonists were bored and wanted to stir up a little action with their tea. So what would it hurt for me to make up for a little lost celebration time? (Generations of it, apparently!)
I presented the idea to Tracy who didn't seem the least surprised to hear me come up with such an attention-seeking scheme. He responded, with only the dry wit that he seems to be able to master, that I certainly won't fall short of finding 45 men in theater who will want to participate in such an event. Well, Mr. Beck...I accept the challenge!
Once I can book 45 men for the event (in a quincenera the hardest part is finding 15 young men to pair up with your 15 best girl friends to perform a ceremonial dance. I have to come up with three times that amount!) then I can start hooking them up with my girlfriends. Here's where the problem lies...If all of my friends have party-pooper Anglo husbands who won't participate then they will have to be lined up with my 45 chosen theater-men and I'm not sure that we can have that event at the church (is there another building large enough?) because I don't think that the average, boring Anglo husband can handle seeing another man's hands on his wife. What started out as a simple, personal, attention-seeking event for a woman in high church standing (I do have a gold card!) might turn in to the beginning of my ex-communication proceedings. However, there is a loophole...having spoken and sung at the Spanish Branches in California I can promise you that I could hold such an event under the supervision of a humble Hispanic Branch President and not get into any trouble whatsoever. Come to think of it, I might need the Branch President to be my dancing partner because Tracy certainly will not attend my event!
I can see it now, I enter the room in my fabulous dress (of course I am skinny by then) through the arbor of roses on the stage, float down the stairs and take my place on the dance floor across from my dashingly handsome borrowed Branch President partner and alongside the other 45 couples who have been trained in the beautiful customary dance (have you ever seen those traditional Anglosaxon dances like in the Jane Austen movies? All they do is circle each other. How romantic is that?) We all glide through the graceful choreography across the floor of the First Unitarian Church cultural hall (the Branch President's cousin is a member there and booked us the room). Families that I love, who love me fill the tables--mostly made up of just the men who refused to be a dance partner and their children who are wrecking the table decorations and spilling cake all over the floor of the room that we put a cleaning deposit down on...CUT! This is my fantasy!
EDIT SCENE. REPLAY: All the children (mostly young girls who are staring at me in my princess dress with adoration and wonder in their eyes) are captivated and extremely well-behaved. The husbands look onto the dance floor with extreme regret that they are not currently partipating in the event. My 45 girlfriends (can I make 40 more friends by then?!) are having the night of their lives! They look at me with such gratitude that I know my family will receive anonymous treats left at our doorstep for years to come...
Wow!
I wish I could finish painting my party picture but my husband just walked in the door of the bedroom, saw me typing with a creepy-dreamy look at my laptop and clearly wants to know--without actually asking where dinner is--where dinner is. And feeling guilty that he just nuzzled my cat right in front of me, actually just nuzzled my neck!
Hmm...have to go. I have eight more months to plan my party but only one hungry husband. And he doesn't even have to imagine me skinny in my cuarenta y cinconera dress to act romantic!
Thank you cat! I think I'll go cook up a little action in the kitchen...
Hiding the remote control this morning bought me about 45 seconds until the TV goes on. If that happens, not even the cat will earn another glance.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Around the Corner
My husband hates surprises. I used to think that was sad. But the more surprises I get in life, the clearer his experience is for me. I love surprises...but only happy ones. Scary, tragic, heart-stopping surprises that are full of disappointment and loss are nothing I look forward to.
Last night I got a phone call from a sister that my mom had fallen and was taken to the hospital. As I made the calls to get more information and to pass that information on to five siblings, I was reminded of all the surprises that have come over the years by phone call: The call when I was eight months pregnant with Matthew that Tracy's dad was dying in the hospital as the result of a car accident; the call that my dear friend had died (too many of those calls to count them); the call that Daddy had a massive stroke; the call that Tracy's brother had cancer and then the call nine months later that he had died; the call that my sister had attempted suicide; the call that my best friend's baby was stillborn...
Then there are the myriad of surprises that I experienced up close and in person: the attempted murder of an apartment neighbor in the middle of the night; the doctor telling us that Tracy had cancer; the suicidal young woman who came to our home for help...
I would just have to agree that I don't like surprises either, except...I remember clearly the feeling of going around the corner of a huge monolith in the rise to Mt. Whitney, after hiking for hours and hours up steep and rocky terrain and suddenly, unexpectedly there appeared a vista so intense and beautiful that it took my breath away; and then there was our sealing ceremony where I was so overwhelmed by the blessings we were being promised that my mascara ran down my face (not the look a young bride is usually going for); there was the birth of my baby when I couldn't believe that she was really mine--after so many months of pregnancy you would have thought I would be ready for that!
I guess surprises are just part of life--sometimes wonderful beyond description and sometimes achingly tragic. And there isn't really anything to prepare us for them or they wouldn't be surprises after all.
This discovery makes me all the more dedicated to creating the best moments that I can when I have the choice of what things will be: knowing that if I greet my children with a homemade snack at the end of a school day that they will smile; predicting if I clean the garage that Tracy will be so grateful; spending time thinking about how much I love to live with these people who bring so much laughter and excitement into my daily life.
When all is said and done, the corners we turn, happy or sad, are so much fewer than the long stretches of every-day straight away. So if I make the best I can of the long, predictable stretches then the curves won't have me stomping so furiously on the break pedal, which my daddy always told me makes a smoother ride! I don't think you will ever see me accelerating around a curve in the road but even if I slow down a little, I won't stop. There are too many sweet surprises ahead of me... and that keeps me on my way.
Last night I got a phone call from a sister that my mom had fallen and was taken to the hospital. As I made the calls to get more information and to pass that information on to five siblings, I was reminded of all the surprises that have come over the years by phone call: The call when I was eight months pregnant with Matthew that Tracy's dad was dying in the hospital as the result of a car accident; the call that my dear friend had died (too many of those calls to count them); the call that Daddy had a massive stroke; the call that Tracy's brother had cancer and then the call nine months later that he had died; the call that my sister had attempted suicide; the call that my best friend's baby was stillborn...
Then there are the myriad of surprises that I experienced up close and in person: the attempted murder of an apartment neighbor in the middle of the night; the doctor telling us that Tracy had cancer; the suicidal young woman who came to our home for help...
I would just have to agree that I don't like surprises either, except...I remember clearly the feeling of going around the corner of a huge monolith in the rise to Mt. Whitney, after hiking for hours and hours up steep and rocky terrain and suddenly, unexpectedly there appeared a vista so intense and beautiful that it took my breath away; and then there was our sealing ceremony where I was so overwhelmed by the blessings we were being promised that my mascara ran down my face (not the look a young bride is usually going for); there was the birth of my baby when I couldn't believe that she was really mine--after so many months of pregnancy you would have thought I would be ready for that!
I guess surprises are just part of life--sometimes wonderful beyond description and sometimes achingly tragic. And there isn't really anything to prepare us for them or they wouldn't be surprises after all.
This discovery makes me all the more dedicated to creating the best moments that I can when I have the choice of what things will be: knowing that if I greet my children with a homemade snack at the end of a school day that they will smile; predicting if I clean the garage that Tracy will be so grateful; spending time thinking about how much I love to live with these people who bring so much laughter and excitement into my daily life.
When all is said and done, the corners we turn, happy or sad, are so much fewer than the long stretches of every-day straight away. So if I make the best I can of the long, predictable stretches then the curves won't have me stomping so furiously on the break pedal, which my daddy always told me makes a smoother ride! I don't think you will ever see me accelerating around a curve in the road but even if I slow down a little, I won't stop. There are too many sweet surprises ahead of me... and that keeps me on my way.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Ready, Set...School!
I wish I was one of those moms who cried when their kids went to Kindergarten. It just seems so loving! I was so busy laughing, and dancing, and smiling that tears just seemed inappropriate. It's not like I don't like my kids. Fourteen years since the first drop off to Kindergarten I'm still trying to figure it out.
You know what else, since I'm being painfully honest, I'm also the first one to figure that my kids are flawed. When some parents exclaim at the disclosure of kids-behavior-gone-bad "It couldn't have been my child!" I'm thinking, "Oh, man, what have my kids done now?!" They are awesome kids, I just know that they are human and I believe, as they like to quote me in parenting mode that "mistakes are opportunities to learn!"
So, if we're all here on earth to learn and we shouted for joy when it was confirmed that we would be coming here, is it really so bad to shout for joy (or dance a jig) when they are about to embark on a new journey? And now that I've moved to Utah and the school bus does all the driving (three different campuses and 2+ hours of driving a day before we moved from California!) I don't see what I have to be depressed about when they leave.
Maybe I have too much faith in teachers. I am a teacher. I love to teach. But not all of their teachers do. For instance, without fail each of my children had the world's worst 6th grade teachers. And I would console them with words of comfort like, "Don't worry...you're going to have a boss some day that is just as crazy as this teacher and you will know just how to work with them!" Doesn't mean I didn't write the letter to the teacher that they deserved. It's okay to request that a crazy teacher changes their behavior, just not smart to think that they really are going to. Being a teacher, I always gave my kids' teachers the benefit of the doubt: maybe it was a tough day, forgot to take their meds, forgot they entered the teaching profession because they love children...But truth was always revealed at parent-teacher conference. A crazy teacher can't hide their bizarre attributes if you know what to look for in your one-on-one with them. Last year, as my daughter and I walked out of the school together I verified, "You're right, Baby, she's scary!" Maybe I secretly like the crazy teacher thing because then my kids think their mom is saner than they had thought :)
I have some pretty fabulous stories from teaching school. Many of them are about crazy parents. But most of them are about my craziness as a parent. For instance, I was always embarrassed with my mini van's assortment of junk on the floor until the day that I dropped Matthew off at school and was greeted by a friend who had arranged a play date to take Kirstie. There was my toddler, in not-yet-changed night time soggy diaper, footy jammies, and crazy, slept on hair (can't remember for sure but syrup-covered-face is a large possibility). Thanks to my overwhelmed- mother-can't-keep-her-van-clean syndrome I was able to find a clean diaper, wipes, a change of clothes, and even a plastic fork to part her hair and create pigtails with!! It was a moment of creative superiority that I have never forgotten. I can never boast about my organizational skills but when it comes to spontaneous bursts of wisdom in a crisis, I pretty much am The Bomb.
And personally I think Kirstie turned out great even though I have a photo of her taking a morning nap in a t-shirt sales box at school while I was immersed in PTA President business. Most preschoolers nap at home...lucky for me she was an easy child!
So how evil does it make me that I actually throw a party every morning before my kids leave for school? It's true. Throughout the universe, moms are greeting their children at the door when they return home from school with warm cookies and milk. Not me. I'm cooking up a storm to help them get out of the house in the mornings. We call this "Breakfast Club". It all began when I started feeling guilty that I am lousy with my kids at night. I am a morning person, big time. I don't know if it is the chance to start a new day and get it right this time or what, but I love mornings and fresh starts. So last year I proposed to my kids that we start a Breakfast Club where they could invite any of their friends to come eat a homemade hot breakfast before school. Breakfast Club rocks. They leave happy and they leave which creates happy me. Isn't happiness the point of our existence?!
One day I will answer for all my sins. I only hope my excitement about the first week of school isn't one of them. It is just too fulfilling to be wrong!
You know what else, since I'm being painfully honest, I'm also the first one to figure that my kids are flawed. When some parents exclaim at the disclosure of kids-behavior-gone-bad "It couldn't have been my child!" I'm thinking, "Oh, man, what have my kids done now?!" They are awesome kids, I just know that they are human and I believe, as they like to quote me in parenting mode that "mistakes are opportunities to learn!"
So, if we're all here on earth to learn and we shouted for joy when it was confirmed that we would be coming here, is it really so bad to shout for joy (or dance a jig) when they are about to embark on a new journey? And now that I've moved to Utah and the school bus does all the driving (three different campuses and 2+ hours of driving a day before we moved from California!) I don't see what I have to be depressed about when they leave.
Maybe I have too much faith in teachers. I am a teacher. I love to teach. But not all of their teachers do. For instance, without fail each of my children had the world's worst 6th grade teachers. And I would console them with words of comfort like, "Don't worry...you're going to have a boss some day that is just as crazy as this teacher and you will know just how to work with them!" Doesn't mean I didn't write the letter to the teacher that they deserved. It's okay to request that a crazy teacher changes their behavior, just not smart to think that they really are going to. Being a teacher, I always gave my kids' teachers the benefit of the doubt: maybe it was a tough day, forgot to take their meds, forgot they entered the teaching profession because they love children...But truth was always revealed at parent-teacher conference. A crazy teacher can't hide their bizarre attributes if you know what to look for in your one-on-one with them. Last year, as my daughter and I walked out of the school together I verified, "You're right, Baby, she's scary!" Maybe I secretly like the crazy teacher thing because then my kids think their mom is saner than they had thought :)
I have some pretty fabulous stories from teaching school. Many of them are about crazy parents. But most of them are about my craziness as a parent. For instance, I was always embarrassed with my mini van's assortment of junk on the floor until the day that I dropped Matthew off at school and was greeted by a friend who had arranged a play date to take Kirstie. There was my toddler, in not-yet-changed night time soggy diaper, footy jammies, and crazy, slept on hair (can't remember for sure but syrup-covered-face is a large possibility). Thanks to my overwhelmed- mother-can't-keep-her-van-clean syndrome I was able to find a clean diaper, wipes, a change of clothes, and even a plastic fork to part her hair and create pigtails with!! It was a moment of creative superiority that I have never forgotten. I can never boast about my organizational skills but when it comes to spontaneous bursts of wisdom in a crisis, I pretty much am The Bomb.
And personally I think Kirstie turned out great even though I have a photo of her taking a morning nap in a t-shirt sales box at school while I was immersed in PTA President business. Most preschoolers nap at home...lucky for me she was an easy child!
So how evil does it make me that I actually throw a party every morning before my kids leave for school? It's true. Throughout the universe, moms are greeting their children at the door when they return home from school with warm cookies and milk. Not me. I'm cooking up a storm to help them get out of the house in the mornings. We call this "Breakfast Club". It all began when I started feeling guilty that I am lousy with my kids at night. I am a morning person, big time. I don't know if it is the chance to start a new day and get it right this time or what, but I love mornings and fresh starts. So last year I proposed to my kids that we start a Breakfast Club where they could invite any of their friends to come eat a homemade hot breakfast before school. Breakfast Club rocks. They leave happy and they leave which creates happy me. Isn't happiness the point of our existence?!
One day I will answer for all my sins. I only hope my excitement about the first week of school isn't one of them. It is just too fulfilling to be wrong!
Thursday, August 7, 2008
P.C. (B+), F.C. (D)
I guess it must be that rumors of school starting again are in the air...mind you I'm not forbidden at my house from saying the word "school" it's just not a good idea. This is what people call "the elephant" in the room--largely there but not spoken of. I don't know if it is because my kids see so much of me in Summer or the fact that they are so under-stimulated that they need something to contemplate on, but I am starting to feel like an organism under the microscope in Science class. Take yesterday, for instance. My youngest daughter (she who knows all at 11 & 3/4 years) pinched my shoulder and exclaimed, "Mom, those aren't shoulder pads!!" I smiled. I'm not a complete idiot. I have watched several episodes of What Not To Wear on the TLC Channel. "Yes," I replied, "notice how thin they are...you can't even tell they're there. They add structure to my shoulder, drawing attention to the sturdiest part of me, lifting the eye toward my face!"
"Oh m'gosh!" It was much too late. She had stopped listening at "Yes," and was madly texting on her cell phone to a friend, possibly a sibling, hopefully not directly to Clinton and Stacey at TLC. All the while she was walking in circles around me, stopping occasionally to pinch a shoulder pad once more. This is not the first time I have been accosted by the local fashion police, nor the last, I fear. When the report card is published I'm anticipating the following grades: Political Correctness (B+), Fashionable Correctness (D).
Maybe the problem goes way back. When I was eight years old there was no "Achievement Days" Program at Church like there is now. Perhaps my generation was improperly trained. Instead of completing "Achievement Days" at the end of my twelfth year I completed "Merrie Miss". I think that "proper attitude" must have been in fashion. We had goals and lessons but clearly the focus wasn't on "Achievement" but on "Merrie".
My oldest daughter, now an adult, was fortunate enough ten years ago to attend what we called "(Name Withheld)'s Charm School and Boot Camp". This Achievement Day Leader held a dinner for the parents to show off their daughters' newly acquired etiquette skills. She also made the girls "drop and do twenty!!" when they had a class in fire-building but failed to create a flame. Was my "Merrie Miss" Leader too easy on me? I adored her. I still adore her. When I made reference once to my awkward "Merrie Miss" years she gasped, "You were fat?! I don't remember you being anything but beautiful!" Having weighed in at 126 pounds in 5th grade I'm baffled by her sincere memory of me. Love, love, love--that's all I remember her teaching me. That's all I remember feeling from her, toward her. It was amazing and wonderful. Come to think of it, she might have worn shoulder pads too, thin ones.
Maybe my problem is best illuminated for me as I sit here and write in the parking lot of The Mall. I don't shop. Had I been a mail-order bride I like to think that would have been a selling-point. "Here's a woman who's not going to sink the family budget through fashion purchases!" So I drive my daughters, who are obsessed with shopping, to the Mall and sit in the car as they skip happily in to spend their money. Their money. Ask them about it sometime, they would love to complain. And so I have a little break: take a nap, work a cross-word puzzle--I fared better in the Bay Area of California where the weather is mild. On extreme purchase trips in the desert of Utah (Mom in the car waiting for 2+ hours) I have wasted a lot of gas turning on the car a few minutes for heat in Winter and cooling off the car for a few minutes in Summer. That didn't seem like a big deal until filling up my car with fuel cost in cash what I used to make after an entire day of work at the office!!
When I tire of resting, or puzzling I start to people watch. Just a few minutes ago, for instance, I saw a woman and her four children emerge from a vehicle all wearing the same color scheme. All of them had light brown shirts, with different patterns of shorts. I was shocked. Yesterday, I don't think my daughter and I were even dressed in the same season! My bad...I look so good in Winter. Brown, oh yes, I remember hearing last Fall, that brown and pink together were the latest. Family friends feel so sorry for my kids at the beginning of the school year that they kindly offer "Do you want me to take you?!" School shopping that is. And they will come home, purchases in hand, excited to show me in fashion-show-style what is theirs.
Bring it on, Stacey and Clinton. Until the $5,000 Bank of America card with my name on it and my trip to New York to have you two throw out my wardrobe, I'll have to just settle for my "Merrie" personality and my barely-passing grade!
"Oh m'gosh!" It was much too late. She had stopped listening at "Yes," and was madly texting on her cell phone to a friend, possibly a sibling, hopefully not directly to Clinton and Stacey at TLC. All the while she was walking in circles around me, stopping occasionally to pinch a shoulder pad once more. This is not the first time I have been accosted by the local fashion police, nor the last, I fear. When the report card is published I'm anticipating the following grades: Political Correctness (B+), Fashionable Correctness (D).
Maybe the problem goes way back. When I was eight years old there was no "Achievement Days" Program at Church like there is now. Perhaps my generation was improperly trained. Instead of completing "Achievement Days" at the end of my twelfth year I completed "Merrie Miss". I think that "proper attitude" must have been in fashion. We had goals and lessons but clearly the focus wasn't on "Achievement" but on "Merrie".
My oldest daughter, now an adult, was fortunate enough ten years ago to attend what we called "(Name Withheld)'s Charm School and Boot Camp". This Achievement Day Leader held a dinner for the parents to show off their daughters' newly acquired etiquette skills. She also made the girls "drop and do twenty!!" when they had a class in fire-building but failed to create a flame. Was my "Merrie Miss" Leader too easy on me? I adored her. I still adore her. When I made reference once to my awkward "Merrie Miss" years she gasped, "You were fat?! I don't remember you being anything but beautiful!" Having weighed in at 126 pounds in 5th grade I'm baffled by her sincere memory of me. Love, love, love--that's all I remember her teaching me. That's all I remember feeling from her, toward her. It was amazing and wonderful. Come to think of it, she might have worn shoulder pads too, thin ones.
Maybe my problem is best illuminated for me as I sit here and write in the parking lot of The Mall. I don't shop. Had I been a mail-order bride I like to think that would have been a selling-point. "Here's a woman who's not going to sink the family budget through fashion purchases!" So I drive my daughters, who are obsessed with shopping, to the Mall and sit in the car as they skip happily in to spend their money. Their money. Ask them about it sometime, they would love to complain. And so I have a little break: take a nap, work a cross-word puzzle--I fared better in the Bay Area of California where the weather is mild. On extreme purchase trips in the desert of Utah (Mom in the car waiting for 2+ hours) I have wasted a lot of gas turning on the car a few minutes for heat in Winter and cooling off the car for a few minutes in Summer. That didn't seem like a big deal until filling up my car with fuel cost in cash what I used to make after an entire day of work at the office!!
When I tire of resting, or puzzling I start to people watch. Just a few minutes ago, for instance, I saw a woman and her four children emerge from a vehicle all wearing the same color scheme. All of them had light brown shirts, with different patterns of shorts. I was shocked. Yesterday, I don't think my daughter and I were even dressed in the same season! My bad...I look so good in Winter. Brown, oh yes, I remember hearing last Fall, that brown and pink together were the latest. Family friends feel so sorry for my kids at the beginning of the school year that they kindly offer "Do you want me to take you?!" School shopping that is. And they will come home, purchases in hand, excited to show me in fashion-show-style what is theirs.
Bring it on, Stacey and Clinton. Until the $5,000 Bank of America card with my name on it and my trip to New York to have you two throw out my wardrobe, I'll have to just settle for my "Merrie" personality and my barely-passing grade!
Monday, August 4, 2008
Patience is a Virtue...
There is something baffling about Eternal Process...
But I don't think there used to be.
Since almost everyone in history was by necessity a farmer I think that patience has become a problem only relatively recently.
Take, for instance, my zucchini plant (give me a few weeks and I'll be begging you to take my zucchini!) When I bought the plant it was tiny. I remember thinking there is no way I am going to have too much zucchini to eat this year. Yet something in the back of my brain told me to plant it away from the other vegetables with plenty of room, just in case it did the incredible hulk transformation thing like last year. We all take a breath when we think about last year and zucchini--it became the staple of every meal.
All spring I was wondering when the zucchini plant was going to take off. It seemed like it was tiny for a long time. Watering every morning I looked for something new. Thank goodness I stopped short of measuring the leaves...the neighbors already have questions about my gardening fanaticism. Then it was definitely bigger, but maybe I gave it too much room. Look how far away the rest of the vegetables were!
Next came the gorgeous yellow-orange flowers, but where were my zucchini?!
I smiled at myself, impatient with zucchini progress and reflected on six months of Tracy's chemo treatments. Now there was an exercise in patience! At mid-forty Tracy and I were suddenly thrust into Senior Citizen lifestyle. Almost overnight all our associates were twenty, thirty or forty years older than us. We saw all the same folks--at the doctor, at the pharmacy, in the chemo treatment room. Our whole lives became centered around appointments, none of them as precisely scheduled as they sounded when we made them. It became clear, quickly, what the word "waiting" means in "waiting room". Remembering how we used to laugh at jokes about Seniors eating dinner at restaurants as early as 4pm, I suddenly caught on that the joke was on the comedian and his amused audience. Seniors aren't going to dinner at 4pm, they are finally done with their "morning" appointments and just now getting lunch!!
We learned what it means to wait, patiently.
I remember with sickening clarity our first visit to the oncologist office. If I could have sat in Tracy's waiting room chair with him, I would have crawled in. The best I could do was to lay my head on his shoulder tucking my face toward his neck so I couldn't see...patient after patient, most with no hair, walking slowly up to the desk to check in. Laughing...I couldn't figure out that part...why were the receptionists, nurses and patients laughing and joking with each other?! Didn't they know they had cancer...scary life-changing, loved-one robbing thief? After weeks of surgery recovery and waiting for enough healing to start the treatments, morning after morning brought waking into consciousness with something huge nagging at my brain. Then that moment when I was fully awake...staring with wide eyes at the ceiling...Cancer, we were living the cancer nightmare.
The first chemo treatment was terrifying. My heart beat fast as Tracy chose a recliner chair in the treatment room. Just that morning, the surgeon had inserted the port into his shoulder, sewn the tubing up into the interior jugular artery in his neck. And now the i.v. needle was secured into his port. And the forty-eight hour treatment had begun. Two hours in hospital, twenty-two with a pump at home, two more in hospital and then the final twenty-two at home. Counting the time waiting for our turn, it was over fifty hours every other week and that was just for the chemo itself. The week in between appointments was when the suffering began, hundreds of body cells, good and bad, destroyed...cheating cancer from taking Tracy, while pushing Tracy as close as possible to death. Know what you learn while you wait? Patience. I can now sit in the same chair at a hospital for hours working word puzzles or number games. The ability to read came later in treatment. At first I couldn't process the print on the page...too many racing thoughts, too much "reality" in my face to let a book lead me to escape into fantasy. My world was too harshly believable, stranger than fiction as they say, for me to run away. Music made me cry, books made me antsy, everything was different, nothing stayed the same.
Fast forward a few months...look at us! We walk into the hospital and Tracy, who is almost completely stripped of any energy at all starts joking with the receptionist and nurses. He isn't bald because his chemo doesn't strip you of your hair, but he is stripped of just about everything else. You wonder what the last thing is you will be holding when all the chips are down. Tracy's humor will never die. Cancer didn't kill it, not when it killed his brother and not when it almost took him. Pain didn't kill it...and the pain meds only sharpen his already-dangerous wit. Laugh and laugh, it was mostly black humor but we clung to it like a lifeboat. And the nurses and staff played along. One day we walked into the treatment room and I said to the nurse, "He would like steak and mashed potatoes today!" Several minutes later she emerged with his toxic meds oxaliplaitin and lucovorin, one a vitamin to kick the other into action. On post it notes attached were one label "Steak" and the other "Mashed Potatoes". Tracy began calling our visits "Kelly's Chemo Club" because I processed the only way I knew, by talking to other patients and their families. Tracy would sit down, get hooked up, and work on his laptop, listen to music in his earphones, or read. If it was a really good day, he would sleep. Nothing was as sweet as sleep, if it was deep, because that was the only true escape from this hell. I would, as he says, "Work the Room". Angels, these people were all angels. All different shapes and sizes, all different colors and ages. All suffering, all afraid. Coming home from treatment always meant one thing, crashing into bed--Tracy because of the physical chemo tidal wave that was starting to hit, me because my emotions were so strung out talking to other patients, hearing their stories, crying, laughing, soberly sharing for hours left me raw and exhausted. I don't know what my children thought. Their parents were emotionally fried and physically spent.
How long will it take for my zucchini plant to produce? Time is measured differently now in my head. One more clean blood test with no evidence of new tumor growth...by the next cat scan we will be in full zucchini harvest. Every day with cancer still asleep is endless possibility, every month of cancer-free cat scan is another anniversary party planned in my head. Will we make it to that 25th in two more summers, I don't know. Will we celebrate our 50th twenty-five years from then? I know one thing and one thing only--it's not about the years, it's about the process and the learning. So far we've built a strong house to stand against the wind. Give us another few zucchini harvests to come and we will have created a mansion that will stand through any storm and be our refuge in Eternity.
But I don't think there used to be.
Since almost everyone in history was by necessity a farmer I think that patience has become a problem only relatively recently.
Take, for instance, my zucchini plant (give me a few weeks and I'll be begging you to take my zucchini!) When I bought the plant it was tiny. I remember thinking there is no way I am going to have too much zucchini to eat this year. Yet something in the back of my brain told me to plant it away from the other vegetables with plenty of room, just in case it did the incredible hulk transformation thing like last year. We all take a breath when we think about last year and zucchini--it became the staple of every meal.
All spring I was wondering when the zucchini plant was going to take off. It seemed like it was tiny for a long time. Watering every morning I looked for something new. Thank goodness I stopped short of measuring the leaves...the neighbors already have questions about my gardening fanaticism. Then it was definitely bigger, but maybe I gave it too much room. Look how far away the rest of the vegetables were!
Next came the gorgeous yellow-orange flowers, but where were my zucchini?!
I smiled at myself, impatient with zucchini progress and reflected on six months of Tracy's chemo treatments. Now there was an exercise in patience! At mid-forty Tracy and I were suddenly thrust into Senior Citizen lifestyle. Almost overnight all our associates were twenty, thirty or forty years older than us. We saw all the same folks--at the doctor, at the pharmacy, in the chemo treatment room. Our whole lives became centered around appointments, none of them as precisely scheduled as they sounded when we made them. It became clear, quickly, what the word "waiting" means in "waiting room". Remembering how we used to laugh at jokes about Seniors eating dinner at restaurants as early as 4pm, I suddenly caught on that the joke was on the comedian and his amused audience. Seniors aren't going to dinner at 4pm, they are finally done with their "morning" appointments and just now getting lunch!!
We learned what it means to wait, patiently.
I remember with sickening clarity our first visit to the oncologist office. If I could have sat in Tracy's waiting room chair with him, I would have crawled in. The best I could do was to lay my head on his shoulder tucking my face toward his neck so I couldn't see...patient after patient, most with no hair, walking slowly up to the desk to check in. Laughing...I couldn't figure out that part...why were the receptionists, nurses and patients laughing and joking with each other?! Didn't they know they had cancer...scary life-changing, loved-one robbing thief? After weeks of surgery recovery and waiting for enough healing to start the treatments, morning after morning brought waking into consciousness with something huge nagging at my brain. Then that moment when I was fully awake...staring with wide eyes at the ceiling...Cancer, we were living the cancer nightmare.
The first chemo treatment was terrifying. My heart beat fast as Tracy chose a recliner chair in the treatment room. Just that morning, the surgeon had inserted the port into his shoulder, sewn the tubing up into the interior jugular artery in his neck. And now the i.v. needle was secured into his port. And the forty-eight hour treatment had begun. Two hours in hospital, twenty-two with a pump at home, two more in hospital and then the final twenty-two at home. Counting the time waiting for our turn, it was over fifty hours every other week and that was just for the chemo itself. The week in between appointments was when the suffering began, hundreds of body cells, good and bad, destroyed...cheating cancer from taking Tracy, while pushing Tracy as close as possible to death. Know what you learn while you wait? Patience. I can now sit in the same chair at a hospital for hours working word puzzles or number games. The ability to read came later in treatment. At first I couldn't process the print on the page...too many racing thoughts, too much "reality" in my face to let a book lead me to escape into fantasy. My world was too harshly believable, stranger than fiction as they say, for me to run away. Music made me cry, books made me antsy, everything was different, nothing stayed the same.
Fast forward a few months...look at us! We walk into the hospital and Tracy, who is almost completely stripped of any energy at all starts joking with the receptionist and nurses. He isn't bald because his chemo doesn't strip you of your hair, but he is stripped of just about everything else. You wonder what the last thing is you will be holding when all the chips are down. Tracy's humor will never die. Cancer didn't kill it, not when it killed his brother and not when it almost took him. Pain didn't kill it...and the pain meds only sharpen his already-dangerous wit. Laugh and laugh, it was mostly black humor but we clung to it like a lifeboat. And the nurses and staff played along. One day we walked into the treatment room and I said to the nurse, "He would like steak and mashed potatoes today!" Several minutes later she emerged with his toxic meds oxaliplaitin and lucovorin, one a vitamin to kick the other into action. On post it notes attached were one label "Steak" and the other "Mashed Potatoes". Tracy began calling our visits "Kelly's Chemo Club" because I processed the only way I knew, by talking to other patients and their families. Tracy would sit down, get hooked up, and work on his laptop, listen to music in his earphones, or read. If it was a really good day, he would sleep. Nothing was as sweet as sleep, if it was deep, because that was the only true escape from this hell. I would, as he says, "Work the Room". Angels, these people were all angels. All different shapes and sizes, all different colors and ages. All suffering, all afraid. Coming home from treatment always meant one thing, crashing into bed--Tracy because of the physical chemo tidal wave that was starting to hit, me because my emotions were so strung out talking to other patients, hearing their stories, crying, laughing, soberly sharing for hours left me raw and exhausted. I don't know what my children thought. Their parents were emotionally fried and physically spent.
How long will it take for my zucchini plant to produce? Time is measured differently now in my head. One more clean blood test with no evidence of new tumor growth...by the next cat scan we will be in full zucchini harvest. Every day with cancer still asleep is endless possibility, every month of cancer-free cat scan is another anniversary party planned in my head. Will we make it to that 25th in two more summers, I don't know. Will we celebrate our 50th twenty-five years from then? I know one thing and one thing only--it's not about the years, it's about the process and the learning. So far we've built a strong house to stand against the wind. Give us another few zucchini harvests to come and we will have created a mansion that will stand through any storm and be our refuge in Eternity.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Savior's Plea
"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do..."
I've never understood that--
Ten words uttered in absolute agony
Hanging from a cross
Struggling for breath
Mere moments left in His mortality.
I'm not alone in my bafflement
Pilot was amazed
And apparently disgusted
Physically and symbolically washed his hands
As if that could ever be enough
While they, the ones our Jesus would ask Father to forgive, screamed
"Crucify him! Crucify him!"
How could He think they didn't know what they were doing
When they had demanded it be done?
And when I ask the Father
Since He has promised to respond
I am staggered by the answer I receive
The Spirit tells me
It wasn't what they did
But Whom they did it to
That would cause Him
The Greatest of All
To plead for their behalf
The Creator of the Universe
Alpha and Omega
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
The very God of the Old Testament--
Was Him they spat upon, stripped, scourged, and mocked.
And when He comes in glory, and every knee shall bow
They will strangle forth the words,
"We knew not, Father. Forgive us. Please forgive us!"
"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
I take the Sacrament each week and my mind wanders
A sacred ordinance performed with His disciples in the Upper Room
Repeated for me each week of my life
So simple, and yet, so hard for me to comprehend
An opportunity for me to fully repent and be clean.
Fretting in my mind about the busy week ahead
I miss my opportunity to feel His forgiving love
"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
I'm so exhausted that I fall into bed
Remembering my prayers as I'm drifting off to sleep
I try to concentrate on the words
It comes out trite and insincere.
I have approached the Royal Throne of God
Addressed the Father by name, mumbled words that even I don't understand
Then closed the feeble attempt in my Savior's name.
"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
My thoughts have carried me into darkness
I feel like there is no hope
I'm not worthy of the Savior's love
I've messed up too much
There is no way back for me.
Denying Christ's power
Believing I'm unsavable
I turn to the Gods of this world
To escape my pain.
My Jesus suffered for me
Yet I turn away
It's too hard to believe what He says.
And Satan smiles.
Another victory for the one who wants to destroy me
Trusting the Master of Lies,
I turn away from the Master of the Universe.
And when I ask the Father
Since He has promised to respond
I am staggered by the answer I receive
The Spirit tells me
It wasn't what I did
But Whom I did it to
That would cause Him
The Greatest of All
To plead for my behalf.
The Creator of the Universe
Alpha and Omega
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
The very God of the Old Testament--
It is His gift that I disregard, disobey, ignore and doubt.
And when He comes in glory, and every knee shall bow
I will strangle forth the words,
"I knew not, Father. Forgive me. Please forgive me!"
And in His infinite mercy, it will be done.
I've never understood that--
Ten words uttered in absolute agony
Hanging from a cross
Struggling for breath
Mere moments left in His mortality.
I'm not alone in my bafflement
Pilot was amazed
And apparently disgusted
Physically and symbolically washed his hands
As if that could ever be enough
While they, the ones our Jesus would ask Father to forgive, screamed
"Crucify him! Crucify him!"
How could He think they didn't know what they were doing
When they had demanded it be done?
And when I ask the Father
Since He has promised to respond
I am staggered by the answer I receive
The Spirit tells me
It wasn't what they did
But Whom they did it to
That would cause Him
The Greatest of All
To plead for their behalf
The Creator of the Universe
Alpha and Omega
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
The very God of the Old Testament--
Was Him they spat upon, stripped, scourged, and mocked.
And when He comes in glory, and every knee shall bow
They will strangle forth the words,
"We knew not, Father. Forgive us. Please forgive us!"
"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
I take the Sacrament each week and my mind wanders
A sacred ordinance performed with His disciples in the Upper Room
Repeated for me each week of my life
So simple, and yet, so hard for me to comprehend
An opportunity for me to fully repent and be clean.
Fretting in my mind about the busy week ahead
I miss my opportunity to feel His forgiving love
"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
I'm so exhausted that I fall into bed
Remembering my prayers as I'm drifting off to sleep
I try to concentrate on the words
It comes out trite and insincere.
I have approached the Royal Throne of God
Addressed the Father by name, mumbled words that even I don't understand
Then closed the feeble attempt in my Savior's name.
"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
My thoughts have carried me into darkness
I feel like there is no hope
I'm not worthy of the Savior's love
I've messed up too much
There is no way back for me.
Denying Christ's power
Believing I'm unsavable
I turn to the Gods of this world
To escape my pain.
My Jesus suffered for me
Yet I turn away
It's too hard to believe what He says.
And Satan smiles.
Another victory for the one who wants to destroy me
Trusting the Master of Lies,
I turn away from the Master of the Universe.
And when I ask the Father
Since He has promised to respond
I am staggered by the answer I receive
The Spirit tells me
It wasn't what I did
But Whom I did it to
That would cause Him
The Greatest of All
To plead for my behalf.
The Creator of the Universe
Alpha and Omega
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
The very God of the Old Testament--
It is His gift that I disregard, disobey, ignore and doubt.
And when He comes in glory, and every knee shall bow
I will strangle forth the words,
"I knew not, Father. Forgive me. Please forgive me!"
And in His infinite mercy, it will be done.
Defined In a Moment of Time
Pack is my middle name. But I had to give it to myself. When I got married and went to register my new identity at the Social Security offices they asked for my full name. My new full name was Kelly Pack Beck. You may not think it is flashy but not everybody's name can fit comfortably into a folk song. Mine does. Try it out: Sing "Kelly Pack Beck and I don't care..." repeated three times for a substitute lyric in "Jimmy Crack Corn". It fits perfectly. To finish the song with great pizazz choose your own favorite name with three syllables (Anderson is popular in my neighborhood). Now sing the previous lyric three times and finish the third line with "...I don't care...my name's not Anderson!" I'm famous for this song. Mostly in California, with young women now adults who are finishing college. Young Women Sunday lessons and Girl's Camp Fireside chats tend to carry from them embarrassing stories that are repeated with every reunion of girls-become-women and their once-upon-a-time leaders. These girls-who-loved-me-when enjoy introducing me to people I have never met by singing this song. Where is a seer-stone for average people when they need one? I never would have started this tradition, had I known!
But the raw and painful truth is that my middle name should have been Drama. I owe the credit for my acquisition of dramatic flair to my mother. I'm confident that she owes the credit to her's. My grandmama could turn on the drama like no other. Although to be accurate, I don't remember her drama ever being turned off. Raised an only girl among three brothers and their friends, she must have carried it like a weapon, used it like the fish that blow themselves up to a threatening size when they sense that they are too vulnerable and about to become prey.
The most dramatic moment I can remember as a child, the one that defines the roles we chose as children best, occurred one night at dinner when my mother stood up from the table and declared, "I am going to divorce your father!" Only half the children in my family still lived at home. My older sister, me, and my younger brother. At this shocking outburst my sister laughed, my brother cried and I politely requested, "Pass the mashed potatoes." Always my savior, food blocked me from pain. And frozen in those few seconds in time is the picture of my trauma, my drama, and my greatest mortal challenge in life--allowing myself to feel the hurt that mortal relationships bring.
But the raw and painful truth is that my middle name should have been Drama. I owe the credit for my acquisition of dramatic flair to my mother. I'm confident that she owes the credit to her's. My grandmama could turn on the drama like no other. Although to be accurate, I don't remember her drama ever being turned off. Raised an only girl among three brothers and their friends, she must have carried it like a weapon, used it like the fish that blow themselves up to a threatening size when they sense that they are too vulnerable and about to become prey.
The most dramatic moment I can remember as a child, the one that defines the roles we chose as children best, occurred one night at dinner when my mother stood up from the table and declared, "I am going to divorce your father!" Only half the children in my family still lived at home. My older sister, me, and my younger brother. At this shocking outburst my sister laughed, my brother cried and I politely requested, "Pass the mashed potatoes." Always my savior, food blocked me from pain. And frozen in those few seconds in time is the picture of my trauma, my drama, and my greatest mortal challenge in life--allowing myself to feel the hurt that mortal relationships bring.
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