F is for Florida

And full-length mirrors. Every time I turned around, there I was. All of me. From all different angles. More of me than ever before. So now the work really begins on making less of me. Because there really was a lot of me in all those mirrors and windows. I recommended on the time-share evaluation that the apartments be upgraded, including the removal of the 1980’s mirrored walls and doors.

All colors on me have normalized. Theoretically, if we visited a nude beach this summer, my left breast is a step ahead with a great square, sun-tanned area. But my tattoos are not impressive. I actually forgot I had them until last week. As the burn subsided, I could just make out the tiny green specks.

Black and white shuttles in Florida were elusive: missed the Discovery landing and the Atlantis shuttle was rolled out to the launch pad while we were in Florida but was being bear-hugged by rigging. So we didn’t see much of Atlantis on the bus tour at NASA. However, we did see an incredible sunset launch of an Atlas rocket, which apparently made the national news, and we met an astronaut, Wendy Lawrence, who has flown on four shuttle missions, including the first one after the Columbia tragedy. We’re strategizing on how to make it back to Florida to see one of the final shuttle launches.

Despite colds, the boys had a great time. We were busier than I had anticipated: NASA three days and Disney two days. Will thought Animal Kingdom was better the Magic Kingdom because the animals were real – not dressed up characters. Bill and Will had many late night swims, returning between nine and eleven each evening. Liam and I were usually in bed by the time they returned. I smothered myself with Aqua-phor and went into the pool one evening. Doing a few strokes with my arms, I could feel the pull of unused muscles in both arms and my chest.

I is for Iowa.

The boys and I are flying to Iowa next Thursday for Mother’s Day weekend. It’s been over a year since we’ve been there. Just a quiet visit with family, including time to visit Grandma Mills and Marge, who are both in nursing homes. Mom and my sister Leslie are planning an open house for us when we go back in June/July.

E is for Europe.

Bill leaves this Sunday for business in Europe, capping off his trip the following weekend in England to see his family. Then he’s off to China the end of May.

A is for all-go, making August 2009 through April 16, 2010 seem like a century ago. Did it really happen? My very short, but right-colored hair, says “yes,” as does my reflection of mass.

Staying strong…big and strong,

Linda

Sniffs

From September 2008…

In all that’s different between my sister and me, we have so many bizarre similarities for living over 1,600 miles apart. We both use Aveda’s Hang Straight on our hair. Occasionally we have the same Liz Clairborne purse. And a few Sundays ago, we both discovered linens from Grandma Murphy’s house in our own homes. We did the same thing: Hoped. And lifted them to our noses. I knew the purple satin pajamas would not smell like Grandma’s. I’ve had them a long time and had sniffed them before. Leslie’s was a surprise bag – a big black garbage bag full of miscellaneous towels and clothes. She smelled a turtleneck and there it was. She wrapped it up and put it back into the bag quickly. We talked three days later and were a little freaked out when we realized we had been “sniffin’” on the same day. Leslie promised I could smell the turtleneck when I visited.

Later at her house, she opened the bag quickly. Took a deep sniff and gave the turtleneck to me. It was there. We quickly shuffled through the bag looking for more. A finger towel I had given to Grandma years ago was still fragrant. Not wanting the smell to evaporate, Leslie quickly wrapped it in a third towel and put the bundle in a Ziploc bag. The third towel was a protective armor against the smell of the baggy. I carried it in my hand luggage from Mitchellville to Cedar Rapids to Chicago to Boston. Worried that I would lose it, I continually checked on it enroute: It was still there when I got home.

Breathing it in sends me time traveling. I’m home visiting, staying with my brother and his family in town, about five minutes from Grandma’s apartment. I call Dad the night before and say, “I’ll go see Grandma in the morning.” The next morning, I roll out of bed, put clothes on, and go to Grandma’s. The door is unlocked, which means she’s awake – probably dressed in the dark and wheeled herself to the living room at 3 a.m. Then I’m sitting in Grandpa’s old recliner, Portmerion Botanic Garden coffee mug in hand, immersed in the smell of her apartment. “I thought your dad would be here by now.” I reply, “I told him you and I were going to visit this morning.” “Oh,” a hint of disappointment glazed with gratitude for my being there. I don’t feel under-appreciated. She wants what she wants when she wants it. Always had, always would.

I hesitate to call it a smell or to say I sniffed it. It’s more of a living remnant from a life that left earth nearly four years ago. A breath of life that is gone. A haunting. One that I daren’t visit too often, after all, how many sniffs are in there? I don’t want to use all of them up. Don’t want to breathe it in too greedily.

The gift of my nose. If I’m ever bed-ridden, I’ve thought about what I want under my nose as I take my last breaths: lilacs, cilantro, Johnson’s baby soap, and now, those finger towels.

Written November 2009...

Day 10 of chemo round #2, 4:30 a.m., I’m enjoying a cup of coffee in my Portmerion Botanic Garden coffee mug. Hand-washed daily, it hasn’t met its demise. When we have house guests, I put it away in the china hutch. When it breaks, I will cry. I don’t want someone else to break it and think they are the cause of my tears.

My sister’s turtleneck was accidentally washed. I offered her half of my sniffs when she came out in October, but she declined as she held the towel to her nose, saying there wasn’t enough left to share.

Linda

Liam's Tree

Spring briefly hit the Northeast a little over a week ago. On that particular Friday it was 60 degrees.

“I want to play Wii!” “I want my DS!” Demands from the resident electronic tyrant. Liam. Stove kicking and wall bashing back up his claim, topped with a raspberry. Spitting, I call it.

“The sun is shining, so we are going outside.”

He has socks on. I just need to get shoes on him. He strikes out in the familiar “run from Mom” circle. Kitchen, dining room, toy room, living room, kitchen, dining room… I grab his shoes in my left hand, prop open the kitchen door, lock open the screen door, and wait. This reminds me all too much of corralling kicking young calves in the barnyard and getting them through a narrowing funnel created by gates onto the ramp up to a livestock trailer.

Moving my thoughts from the barnyard to the kitchen, I wait. But he detours onto the couch in the living room. “I’m not going!”

From a class I had taken the night before, I take the hint to let a child huff and puff without responding. I’ve already established the goal of going outside. Now we just need to move in that direction.

No words, I wrangle my calf bare-handed, and we edge closer to the open kitchen door, giving the stove one last kick. “I want my DS!”

“Sun’s shining.” I say this as if meaning that as long as the sun is shining the battery in the DS is dead.

Breaking the barrier of the four walls is all it took for the tirade to stop. “What a beautiful day, Mom!” he proclaimed as we put his shoes on while sitting on the top step. He was off. I closed the screen door. Mission accomplished.

I picked up sticks from our four-day wind and rain storm. Liam came over admiring a little evergreen branch he had found. “Mom, I’m going to help him grow!”

“That’s a great idea, Liam!”

He took it to the swing set and propped it against the leg with rocks. Then he disappeared into the house and reappeared with a cup of water. Trip after trip he watered the branch. Then we met on the steps and he said, “I’m giving it some juice.” Yes, indeed there was a squeezed apple juice box on the counter. I can live without one juice box. I went back to raking, still eyeing the trips back and forth.

Then the traffic stopped. Funny how noise and constant motion is OK. Silence, not so much.

I got to the screen door just in time to hear a big splash and “Oh man!” A pretty significant orange juice spill covered the counter, the cupboard doors, and the floor, nearly floating the cup and spoon on the floor. Amidst a perplexing array of evidence on the floor – a little jar of Mom’s homemade strawberry jam and the liquid soap dispenser – I casually asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m making food for my tree.”

“Wow, it should grow really well with this. Do you know who made it? Grandma.”

“Oh,” as he pumped another bit of soap into the plant food mixture in his glass: OJ, strawberry jam & hand soap.

No way, no how could I get upset. As messy as it may seem, there was much more creativity in making plant food than in pushing buttons on electronic gizmos. And we had accomplished the goal: The sun was shining, and we weren’t playing Wii.

I’m still contemplating the order of ingredients in the plant food. Was the spoon in the soap concoction before or after it was dipped into this precious little jam jar? Mentally counting the few jars of homemade jam left it the basement, driven out last summer by my family, I put the lid on and put it back in the fridge. I’ll test it another day. Or, just proclaim the remainder as plant food, another day.

Enjoying spring.

Linda

Hair Moments

Chapters could be written about the hair adventure. I’ve just picked up the highlights of the last few months and written cliff notes to that novel.

December 26, 2010 I wore my wig out yesterday to Jess and Randy’s for Christmas dinner. When we got back to our house, I took it off. Will saw me and said, “Mom, I like you the way you look with your wig on… but I like the way you look with it off too. I just love you, Mom, however you look.” :)

The wig is funny. I wear it out, mostly to school, so that I look normal. However to me when I have it on, I feel like I’m in disguise, but then I pass a mirror and think, “Yeah, that’s more like me.” By sight. By feel, it’s so fake. At home when I have it off, it feels better. The new normal in my house. In general, I’ve given up putting a hat or the wig on when someone rings the doorbell. I’ve found my crotchety old mail man is nicer to me bald than when I have hair.

Facial hair may have thinned, included my eyelashes, but didn’t fall completely out. Now what? Vaniqua? A cream to slow hair growth. But if chemo can’t make it fall out, what the heck does Vaniqua have that slows it down? My hesitancy in putting that on my face: anhydrous. Listed as an ingredient on the tube. Crazy. Of course I know it’s some derived meek strain, but still, anhydrous? That’s the spray that kills weeds in fields. When that was sprayed on the ground was one of the few times on the farm us kids were pulled into the house. It’s poisonous. Now I’m given something with a mutated version of anhydrous to dab on my face? Can’t get my mind around that one.

January 5, 2010 Hats. Packing to go out for the day. My warm floppy knitted hat – plausible that there may be hair underneath. Sleeping hat – doesn’t fall of in bed and adds an extra layer of insulation under the floppy. The gingerbread fleece hat – it floats on my head, obvious that I don’t have hair. Indoors: Any hat becomes a grab’n’go to take the chill off.

March 1, 2010 I’m sitting waiting for labs to be drawn – one last check before starting radiation. Sitting her cap-less – because I have hair. Well, to Zazu, my friend the Papillion puppy, who cocks his head and looks at me hard as if to say, “My goodness, that woman is bald!” And except everyone else here who didn’t see me without this grown-back crew cut. To them I still don’t have hair. But it’s there. More color and chicken fuzz soft.

March 21, 2010 I ran into a friend a couple weeks ago who went through chemo two years ago. She’s one of those women I have in my ring of strong and formidable. While it was great to see her, it was fantastic to see her eyebrows and eyelashes! They outlined her sparkling eyes. When we went to Bill’s holiday dinner in December, I had eyebrows. I clearly remember darkening them just a bit with an eyebrow pencil.

Then a month later, getting ready for another evening out, I got my eyebrow pencil out and took off my glasses. Then I leaned in close to the mirror. And closer still. Four inches from the mirror. Where the hell did my eyebrows go? There was nothing to add a little color to. I could have drawn in any shape eyebrows I wanted. I opted for chemo camouflage and just put my glasses back on. I thought my eyebrows were going to stay with me.

This followed a memorable, happy occasion: I woke up in January one night sleeping on my stomach! I hadn’t been able to do that since June. Did my eyebrows get rubbed off on my pillow with renewed stomach sleeping?

Last Thursday I met another of my strong and formidable friends. She was about a month ahead of me in the same chemo treatment. Sporting the same haircut as me, she looked great. But I was enamored by her eyebrows. “Your eyebrows are beautiful!” They were completely grown in, lush and full of color. They capped off her sparkling eyes.

Bill and I took the boys to Lion King last night and there was just enough little eyebrow seedlings to give a touch of color to. And eyelashes, although they are growing straight out, reminding me of a pointer dog.

Getting up to leave my writing spot at Panera’s this morning, a woman stopped me. “Excuse me, I love your hair and I’ve been thinking about going with that style. Can I just ask you how often you cut it to keep it that style?” I thought this would happen; I didn’t think it would be this soon. Have I crossed the line from being a chemo patient to a hip woman confident in a half-inch hair style? I grinned as I explained I was recovering from chemo to her horrified face. Still smiling, I reaffirmed that I was fine and thanked her for the compliment.

March 22, 2010 I stopped wearing my wig last week. After affirmations from friends that kids at school would be OK with it, one morning last week, I just couldn’t put it on before going to school. Drop-off and pick-up at school were the only times I donned the thing. “Will, I think I’m done wearing the wig to school. Are you OK with that?” “Sure, Mom.” It’s a well-known fact that Liam prefers me with “Casey hair.” The first day I wore my big floppy sun hat. Good for the beach but felt a bit silly at school. The second day I went as me, still with the camouflaged triangle of glasses, earrings, and a hint of lipstick. All was OK. To any shocked kids' comments of “You got your hair cut!” I simply responded, “It’s really short now, isn’t it?” And left it at that. Most let it go at that. Some conferred with their moms about what the heck was going on with my hair.

March 23, 2010 I took Will to get his passport renewed this afternoon. And I had to provide ID. My chemo camouflaged face looked nothing like the mom’s face on my driver’s license. Thankfully, the woman helping me with the application discreetly held on to my license to compare my signature on the paperwork to that on the license.

March 28, 2010 Booting up the computer at Panera’s this morning, I saw a brief but solid outline of my eyebrows in the dark reflection of the monitor before the blue welcome screen popped up.

Staying strong and holding out for a ponytail,

Linda

Calling Grandmas

Over a month ago, my grandma fell and shattered her femur. After a surgery to place a rod, she’s now in a skilled nursing facility, regularly having physical therapy. Every time I talk to her, she sounds strong. Maybe a little tired, but her voice is strong.

I called Grandma Friday, and she answered after a few rings. A pause, for her to turn down her hearing aid, then, “Hello?”

“Hi Grandma!”

“Hello!” She always recognizes my voice.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, I was just getting back to my chair.”

“Have you had physical therapy today?”

She cleared her throat and said, “No. I only do that twice a week.” The spunk that she answered with dissolved.

“Oh really?” Shocked, I didn’t believe this was true.

“Who is this?” she asks this occasionally during my phone calls, just to be sure. But she normally asks a bit sooner in the conversation.

“It’s Linda.”

“Well, I thought so,” what Grandma always says during this indentifying interchange.

“Have you had any company today?”

She mumbled names I didn’t understand or know.

Our pitter patter continued for a few minutes. Then we were running out of things to say. She just didn’t sound like herself.

“Sis called last night. She always calls at night.” Her voice was quietly wandering off while I was thinking, who is Sis?

From all accounts, I’ve heard Grandma is really doing well. This voice wasn’t what I expected. Grandma is still sharp. Her voice is loud and clear on the phone. I started to get panicky. I hadn’t talked to her in three weeks. Am I being protected from anything? I really don’t like that idea… But still, who is Sis? Maybe I misunderstood the name.

Suddenly, flooded with relief, it clicked.

“Who is this?” I asked. She mumbled something I couldn't understand.

Finally I said, “Is this Elsa?” A confused silence. “You know, I think I’m talking to someone else and you think you are talking to someone else! It’s been a nice chat. Take care!”

I redialed Grandma’s number that rings to the main desk first. “I just talked to a Grandma for ten minutes, but it wasn’t MY grandma!”

“Oh, did that Eleanor picked up Elsa’s phone? Let me see if Elsa is in her room.” I envisioned her walking down the hall and peeking around a corner. “Elsa isn’t in her room. She’s playing dominoes.”

A little overly excited about a grandma playing dominoes, I answered, “That is wonderful! That is soooo good to hear! Thank you!”

Thank God.

An Eleanor and an Elsa as roommates. Most confusing.

Linda

Golfing with Frank

Last Wednesday was beautiful: approaching 50 degrees and full sunshine. I pick Will up at 12:30 on Wednesdays, thinking with next year being mandatory all-day first grade, we’ll have an afternoon a week together this spring. The day’s plan with Will had been to play Monopoly. He still has bragging rights to bankrupting me in January when Bill and Liam were in England. He tells complete strangers about the upset. No ‘did you know my mom had chemo and that’s why her hair is so short?’ But rather ‘You know, I bankrupted my mom in Monopoly!’

With not a cloud in the sky, I couldn’t put a game board on the dining room table. I went for gold-star status: I loaded my golf clubs and Will’s in the van and called the professional gold-star golfing Dad to see where he suggested I take Will for nine holes. Bill gave me some other pointers: make sure to get a golf cart and to play off my ball so as not to create a bottleneck on the course. I got a little nervous about the speed we would play at – but onward. I had already committed to it mentally. After a short guessing game with Will about where we were going, I couldn’t hold back: “I have golf clubs in the back.” “Are we going mini-putting?” No. “To a driving range?” No. “Are we going to a real course?!?!” Yes! “YES!!”

The owner of the course rang us up and went over basic etiquette and rules, which I appreciated the brush-up. Let people play through and only drive the cart in the rough. I put a big floppy hat on to protect my wig-less head. “Are you wearing that?” (That was nearly capitalized the way a pre-teen would say it.) He was OK with it when I explained its practicality. I saw myself in the reflection of the office window. Poor kid.

We loaded our clubs on the cart. “Do you know how to drive this, Mom?” I haven’t broken out my baby blue golf bag in years. Will didn’t know the full extent of my prowess at this silly game of chasing little white – or in my case, hot pink – balls over acres and acres of land. “Yes, I do.” But the real question, I thought, was can I even come close to making contact with a ball? We approached the first tee and were up after a five-some.

Then Frank joined us. I immediately thought that we had just ruined this poor guy’s first day out. What was he thinking? Something like, “Great, a floppy-hatted mom and a chatty little boy”? After introductions, Frank asked us where we wanted to tee off. I had forgotten there were two sets of tees. We took the ones closest to the flag. Frank started farther back. Despite his reserved confidence in his abilities, Frank could crank that ball. “Wow, that’s pretty good for the first time out!” I lauded as I set up for my first worm burner of the day.

At nearly 78 years old, Frank gave Will pointers and listened intently as Will told him about bankrupting me at Monopoly while we waited on a hole to tee-off. And he seemed genuinely interested in what ball color Will was using, and he learned quickly that collecting tees was a side hobby on the course for Will. Then they began collecting balls that had been deserted in the water-logged areas of the course. “Yeah, you can cross that tape and get that ball, Will. Go ahead!” Will’s sure that Frank’s advice to “take gentle swings” helped him hit the ball 200 to 400 yards. Fish stories and golf stories are in a genre all their own.

Will would hit the ball and ask, “Did you see that one, Frank?” Then Will would skip to his ball 10 feet or 50 yards away. He fell into this course-chat very easily. To hear him say “Frank” you would’ve thought they went out on the course every week. As for me, I picked up my ball many more times than Will did. I had to back track and get the golf cart, so often times I dropped my ball next to his and took a shot. Yes, often we were playing best ball with Will’s ball.

Frank and Will burned up the greens with one- and two-putts. “Will has great strokes on the green!” It sounded natural for Frank to say “Will.” I told Frank that Will and his brother had been practicing at home. After the snow melted, Will and Liam were digging in the yard one day, in the “anything goes” zone. I saw a hole about a foot in diameter and six inches deep form. Then the golf clubs came out and they practiced chipping and putting into this cavern. I put the kibosh on another hole in a part of the lawn where grass actually grows. They had quietly broken ground in pursuit of another golf hole in the course on our property. No gold star for me that day for impeding construction.

My expectations of us slowing play didn’t come to be. Ahead of the five-some in front of us was a six-some. This would’ve been painful to other golfers, but to Will that meant he could hit balls all the way down the fairway without anyone telling him to hurry up. Frank seemed to enjoy the walk, while I worked on getting re-connected to only three clubs: my driver, the 8 iron, and my putter.

After the ninth hole, nearly three hours later, Frank shook my hand and roughed up Will’s hair. I told him it had been a real pleasure golfing with him, and I thanked him for being so patient. “Well, I was a school teacher. I know kids.” Indeed, he did.

An airplane ride, a day at the beach, a scuba diving trip, an afternoon on the golf course. Sometimes you meet the kindest people in fleeting moments. Sometimes it’s hard to say “good-bye” to these gems. But it’s OK, because afternoons like these give me faith that the world is filled with Franks. We just need to be open to finding them. And to letting them find us.

Linda

Ritualistic Comfort

Sitting at a table in Panera bread, a bit mystified at my frequent return. It’s a little about convenience, a bit about good food, a lot about having a big table to spread out my stuff. It’s also pretty good for people watching: A Red Hat Society meeting is taking place in the reserved room today.

Why I shouldn’t come here: a couple years ago I had to crawl out of a bathroom stall on my stomach because I couldn’t get the door unlocked. I brushed off, washed, then reported the mishap to the manager on duty. “Yeah, we’ve been having problems with that lately.” Period. No sorry. No free cup of coffee. No sign on the bathroom door. Perhaps it’s that living-on-the-edge part of me that keeps luring me back to this no-remorse establishment with gourmet sandwiches.

This is my stop-off after radiation today. It must be day five because an x-ray is taken every fifth day to make sure the coordinates are OK. Still feeling good. No redness. Slathering on creams twice a day. In the radiation teach, my nurse went over details of treatment, most of which were no surprise. However, she did mention that I shouldn’t take any anti-oxidant supplements during treatment. They create a protective wall around cells and may keep the radiation from penetrating cells. After those cells are broken down they need to be flushed out, so I’m supposed to drink lots of water. After radiation, new cells need energy, so I’m supposed to eat protein-rich foods in my well-balanced diet. Consequently, I carry my water jug in the van to my daily appointments and a can of mixed nuts is by my side for a quick burst of protein when I come out. Every day. Yet another source of power: I need radiation but I can do SOMETHING.

That reminds me of my sister’s comment when her husband came home just before supper to a houseful of four children under five years old. Hers and mine. Toddler antics were keeping three moms – my sister, our mom and me – dancing in the kitchen. He was a wall flower and stayed outside this wildly choreographed scene. Finally, my sister turned to him. “Do SOMETHING for God’s sake!” Come dance with us! A call to action. I need it sometimes. I want to say it sometimes. The struggle can be in finding the SOMETHING.

During chemo, I had to be tagged every visit with a wristband. A reminder that I was handing over the reins. On my left wrist I wear a LIVESTRONG yellow band and an Italian charm bracelet concealing a lymphedema medic alert not to squeeze or to poke my arm. That’s the wrist I would hold out for the wristband. Unsure how it happened, but one day it ended up on my right wrist. After my port was accessed, I headed back to the front desk. It had to be changed. I was edging on frantic that the ritual had been upset. Professional baseball players have their little rituals and I had mine. I cut the bracelet off and said, “I’m sorry but I really need another band printed and put on my left wrist. I don’t know what I was thinking when I held out my right arm.” No blink of the eye. I wasn’t the first. At the end of the day, I stopped at the desk and reached for the black-handled scissors. Then I Purelled; most chemo patients handled those scissors on their way out – over 100 patients a day.

Outside the Museum of Fine Arts last week, Will loved the geese wandering around pecking at the grass. One of them had a wide band around its neck. Will wondered what it was so I explained the tag. Then he asked if it hurt the goose. I immediately said it didn’t, but I wasn’t confident in my answer. Who’s to say if an innocent looking band is painful? Just a new normal for the goose, like it or not. By the way, these were civil geese, unconcerned with humans – no hissing or gawky neck moves.

Staying strong and still using Panera’s bathroom,

Linda

Baby Chicks

With yellow downy feathers, chicks are absolutely adorable. In the spring when Mom got around 20 baby chicks, we helped get them settled. We would lift each one out of the crate and gently dip its beak in the water so it would know where to find a drink on its own. Mom would use a foot-high ring from a hog feeder as a fence to keep them in one area of the back part of the old corn crib that we used as a baby chicken house. Mom hung a heat lamp over the top of it to keep them warm. Tiny, tiny, tiny little chirps would fill the air as they made the transition to their new home. Then they nestled together under the heat lamp, looking like a big fuzzy sun. Once cozied up, the chirping started to subside as they felt the warmth from the light and from one another’s little winged bodies.

On cool spring mornings when we went in to feed them, the chirping would start as the first crack of sunlight hit their eyes and they heard the door creaking open. Stepping over the fence, we would take ground corn in to fill the feeders. The chicks would see our toes and start pecking at them, not enough to really hurt, just enough to keep us on edge of that eventual one peck that would make a little red mark. That first strong peck was an indicator that we would need to guard our feet better in the future.

When the chicks feathered out, we would put them in the chicken coop. It had a big fenced outside area attached to it. Their food and water was outside. When they were young, they had only the coop and the fenced area to wander. They needed to learn this was home, where they needed to sleep at night. If they didn’t learn this lesson and decided to find their own roost for the night, they would be open prey for skunks, raccoons, and possums. When they got bigger, we would open the chicken coop doors every morning so they could roam around for the day. Free-range chickens.

Around dusk, their homing mechanism would kick in and they would return to the safety of the chicken coop. Once they were all quietly on roosts, Mom would close the door to the coop, making it secure so that it did not become a midnight meal house for those predators, who if given the chance, could quite possibly wipe out all the birds in one night.

Hens would start laying eggs when they were six to eight months old. Picking up eggs was one of my favorite jobs. The nest stand was made of metal and looked a bit like a honeycomb. It had eight nests total: four across and two high with boards as roosts on the outside of each entrance. Hens would pick a straw-filled hole, lay eggs, and then leave. With the exception of the setters. They were tough chicks, unwilling to freely relinquish their eggs. I would wear gloves to protect my hands from their vicious pecks. From 20 chickens, we would get around 15 to 19 eggs a day.

One of my first pets was a little chick that I got for Easter when I was around five years old. Starting off downy yellow, she grew up to have red feathers, so I named her Red. (We also had a dog we called Dog.) I would pull an ear of corn out of the corn crib and walk around the barnyard rolling kernels of corn off the ears while Red and the other chickens followed me around snatching up what I dropped. And that’s about all you can do with a pet chicken. I think she lived for five years. I remember the day I went in and found her in the roost, head down, eyes closed. I so hoped she was just asleep. I tore out of the chicken house in tears. I seem to recall her and my Grandpa Murphy’s passing to be close. At ten years old, it was an emotional overflow of the finality that death brought. Dad buried her out by the corn field, and we put a cement block on her grave with a plastic red rose. Although just a chicken, I imagine the block is still there marking Red’s grave in our little overgrown pet cemetery.

Thinking about baby chicks a lot lately… every time I touch my head: my hair feels like chick fuzz! Only I have a funny Mohawk thing going on on top of my head.

Staying strong,

Linda (Thanks Mom for the fact-checking details!)

Going for the Glow

Monday was the dress rehearsal for radiation. I was positioned on the table and several x-rays were taken to make sure the radiation coordinates were accurate. Tuesday was supposed to be the first day of radiation, but after two hours waiting for the machine to be up and running, the appointment was canceled.

Yesterday, Wednesday, the machine was working again. I was done in 10 minutes, from the time I left the waiting area to when I was dressed and leaving the building. Today was the same. I feel nothing during the treatments, which last for no more than two minutes. My skin looks no different. I cover my left side with aloe and “My Girl’s Radiation Cream” after every treatment. Then put on my non-aluminum deodorant before heading out the door. Tom’s of Maine is the only deodorant the doctor approves of me wearing during treatment. I can only imagine sparks flying off my pits with the regular stuff. Like a metal-edged plate in the microwave.

Talking with other patients in the waiting room and then confirming with my doctor, I discovered that I’m actually having the 33-day plan. I thought it was a six-week plan or 30 days. That three day difference means we won’t be going to Iowa in April for a long weekend. Assuming the machine doesn’t break down again, my last treatment will be April 16th. We had already booked a time share in Florida for the following week. So we are taking a late in the day flight out on Monday the 19th, just in case I need to run in for one last treatment that morning.

Today in the waiting room I met a woman who was a least 65; she told me she was on Medicare. She walked in, looked at me, and point blank said, “When was your last chemo?” To my “end of January” reply, she said, “Holy shit! You have a lot of hair!” Which made me grin: Only another chemo patient would think I have a lot of hair right now. She pulled off her gray wig to show me her bald-on-top head. Her hair is growing quickly on the sides and not so much on top. She’s been bald since August; it’s taking a while for hers to grow back. Mine is growing in evenly. I’m probably back to the crew cut length of Halloween.

As of this week, I’m wearing the wig less and less, mostly to school to pick the boys up. I took Will to the Museum of Fine Art in Boston yesterday without the wig. He looked at me and said, “But Mom, we’re going to be with people. Why aren’t you wearing your wig?” “I just don’t want to, Will.” He has been cataloging when I have something on my head.

An aside: We were looking for Monets in the museum. From the information center, we got a bag with colored pencils and paper in it, then a museum employee took us to the gallery where most of Monet’s paintings are displayed. The woman asked Will what kind of art he liked best. Without hesitation and very seriously, he said, “Monet’s and mine.” We sat on the floor in front of two Water Lily paintings and sketched them for 45 minutes.

I started a Zumba class with Carrie Tuesday night. I can only describe it as a dance class with a Latin feel, so my hips say today. I put in my contacts and didn’t wear my wig. In the mirrored studio, I looked like a dancing turnip. By default, we were in the front row. I wondered if my looks distracted anyone. By the end, I had changed to a glowing beet. With my fair complexion, I have always gotten red in the face quickly. I should have warned the instructor, or at least Carrie, because I looked like I was going to pop. But I didn’t overdo it… I heard some of you gasp at the mention of dance class.

Staying strong,

Linda