Reflections about Being Bald

A sense of familiarity lurks behind these days.  A rewind of frames whisks through my mind’s eye then a play button slows the scenes as they unfold.  I feel the panic of the rewind but nod as the play unfolds because I’m on the other side of that time. 

In the first scene just after a diagnosis of breast cancer, I’m sitting alone across from my surgeon.  I’m holding a scribbled list on a piece of ripped and folded piece of paper.  The handwriting is jerky, and the last item stands in its own space a half-inch below the other items on the list.  She talks.  I listen.  I question.  She answers.  I hold a poker face and can’t say the words. I turn the paper to her, so she can read the last line.  “Chemo scares me.” She said words to the effect that it should. No surprise that it does. Use common sense.  Don’t go to a school Halloween party with snotty-nosed little kids running around.  I didn’t.  Instead, I wore gloves to the grocery store, didn’t travel to Iowa for a year, and stayed home much of the time. Then two months after chemo ended, I went to the school’s spring Harry Potter-themed field day.  I donned a witch’s costume and painted moons and stars on little cheeks. When I finally flew to Iowa, that big hug from Mom was the sweetest. It still holds me tight today. (Read “Frustration.”)

Know there are variables.  As I started a new chemo med in the fifth round, Bill and my nurse peered into my face with hawk eyes.  The drug was administered via an IV push rather than drip.  That means my nurse sat inches from my face slowly injecting the bright red chemo through my port every thirty seconds or so.  Some patients have extreme allergic reactions to this med which usually happen in the first or second (of four) bi-weekly infusions.  I did not have a reaction.  The intensity of their gaze relaxed. As did my anxiety. (Read “Wednesdays.”)

Let God have it.  My minister said, “I really feel you will move through this.  In the meantime, you can let God have it.”  I’m of too practical a blood line to be a lofty pray-er.  As a kid, church was Sunday mornings milking cows in the barn with country music playing in the background.  My minister was not telling me to gently set this box of woe into God’s hands.  Let Him have it.  He can take it.  I was not struck down by lightning during cuss-studded rants toward Him. The calm present after those rants led to more calm in our future conversations.  And because words of prayer do not brim through the top of my head up to the heavens, I wrote a prayer, made a prayer bracelet, then said and felt that prayer every day throughout that year.  I reread it this morning and thought how strangely relevant it is in this time. (Read “Power and Prayer.”)

Ban searching the internet. From October 2009 through April of 2010, I didn’t set foot on the internet to Google anything.  I only used the computer to write and to access my email account.  I made this decision when I was diagnosed after a search for “how to talk about your kids about breast cancer.”  To this day, the most viscous illustration haunts me from that search.  A drawing of a woman upright on the couch, her head leaning on her shoulder as if she was a sleep.  Her face was green.  It wasn’t a playful cartoon illustration.  It was a serious scene and meant for a child’s eyes.  I never read a book about cancer to my then nearly 3-year-old and 5-year-old sons.  I simply told them what they might see different about me and let them ask questions.  (Read “My Hair Will Fall Out.”)

Ironically, the reason I started writing was to let people who were not living near us know that I was not green and dying.  And that’s how I tell people who ask how and when I started to write essays.  I wasn’t green and dying. I was taking the reins and spinning my own story around my own experience.  We each have our own experience, again, too many variables to make any steadfast predictions for ourselves.  Control the variables we can; have faith that other variables—scientists researching therapies or manufacturers making new products—will precipitate change.

Find people you trust and follow their instructions. My chemo doctor told us to go out for a nice dinner after the first chemo infusion.  My doctor and nurses told me they would take every measure such that I didn’t get sick.  I had a basket of medicines to take those first days of chemo.  I might have been tired and run down, but I never puked during chemo.  My chemo doctor told me to accept the help that’s helpful and to be careful of help that isn’t.  Be mindful of people and information that might cause more harm than good. Listen to sound advice and follow it.  Release control when needed, maintain it when you can. Limit time spent with multiple outside sources.  Go rake the yard or put a load of laundry on. (Read “My Wicker Life Boat”)

It was during chemo that my appreciation for laundry become boundless.  There are no surprises in doing laundry.  I know how to handle those shape changers that move from clean clothing to dirty laundry and back again.  The sorting is rhythmic.  Using the right water temperature is second nature.   Following my process of partially drying then hanging shrink-ables is systematic.  Folding laundry neatly is edging on OCD—totally in my control.  Seeing a laundry room stacked with clean piles is rewarding.  It reminds me of making hay on a 95-degree July afternoon then looking back over your shoulder as you leave the field to see bales and bales of hay; they mark well-spent energy. (Read “An Update from the Laundry Maven.”)

Get dressed.  Fake it until you make it.  Put your best face forward.  On writing days when I go to the library, I dress like a writer.  At home with my family, I dress like a mom who goes to the grocery store and drives carpools.  When I’m cleaning or cooking or working outside, I wear old clothes for the task at hand. If I’m going to work out, I don’t shower first thing in the morning; I put on workout clothes.  When I dress for days as though it doesn’t matter who I am or what my roles are, my soul takes on the shabbiness of my mismatched pajamas.  Saturdays and Sundays still exist on the calendar, and I let myself linger longer in comfy clothes.  Ten years ago, I was bald.  Before I started chemo, I went to get new glasses with bold frames that would draw attention to my eyes.  The optician liked the ones I picked out, “They match your hair beautifully!” I looked in the mirror at my thick, wavy shoulder length hair and wondered if the glasses would match my bald head.  When my hair fell out, I built a recognizable “me” through chemo camouflage: glasses, a wig, earrings, and lipstick.  That woman I built up from the foundation of a bald head with no eyebrows was powerful. (See Chemo Camouflage Photo Gallery)

Spend time navel gazing.  Be in the present.  I went out for groceries yesterday.  I had a mask and rubber gloves, took hand sanitizer and cleaning wipes with me.  I ran through the procedure manual built ten years ago on keeping unwanted yuck away from me.  Chemo cyclically knocked my immune system out of whack.  Before going into the store, I put on rubber gloves and a mask.  My credit card was in my pocket; I left my purse tucked under the seat out of germs’ way.  Inside the store, my breathing got heavier as I imagined those tiny invisible bastards.  Soon my mind was brought back to the immediate here and now.  The mask smelled. It was an unpleasant smell—fish.  Why? In the second aisle it dawned on me: I had fish and chips for lunch just before I went out.  I lived the after effects of lunch for a half our as I scuttled about hunting and gathering.   Note: Most definitely should brush teeth before masking up to go grocery shopping.

Is now an appropriate time to laugh?  Yes. Read “Impersonations.”

Steak and Kidney Pie with Bobby Pins

Yesterday I burned my pieces of toast, but I scraped the black crumbs off of the four sides and still used it to make my egg sandwich.  I burned nachos and cheese under the broiler at lunch time.  I scooped the smoking pan out and whisked it straight to the metal table on the deck.  Bill sees me.  “Are you sure they aren’t salvageable?”  I tell him that my granddad might have eaten the nachos, but they were too far gone for me.  I hear the echo Granddad’s laughing voice, “When it’s brown it’s cookin’, and when it’s black it’s done!” 

On Friday, Bill defrosted tubes of rolled pie crust, pie shells in tins, lamb kidney, and chunks of stewing beef.  Like a driven mad scientist, on Saturday he commandeered the kitchen in the late afternoon to make steak and kidney pie—and steak pie for me.  He had four websites up and was building his own recipes out of different chefs’ opinions.  When I came in from outside, the kitchen smelled delicious as the meat was simmering away in a sauce that included a pint of Guinness beer.  The aroma went bitter as I watched Bill replace one lid and pull the other off the second pan. 

Instantly, I knew our family wouldn’t be eating together this evening.  I focused on the Guinness smell over the kidney smell much the way I stand on one leg in yoga and pick a spot on the wall to drive my gaze into such that I don’t lose my balance. I reminded myself that the kidney smell did not represent my steak-only pie.  I opened the fridge to see a hearty package of Brussels sprouts.  Roasted sprouts would neutralize the kidney—and farther push Will and Liam to the far corners of our house behind closed doors.  

An hour-and-a-half before Bill and I sat down to eat, I grilled steak, made mashed potatoes, and tossed lettuce in dressing for the boys.  Bill and I sat down with his favorite English meal; he opened a can of stout, similar to Guinness, to go with it.  The beer poured like motor oil into a pint glass.  “Perfect… I’ve been saving this for a cold day to have with steak and kidney pie.” Granddad ate liverwurst and stinky limburger cheese; no doubt he would’ve enjoyed sharing Bill’s steak and kidney pie. My steak pie was reminiscent of a wintry beef stew tucked inside Grandma Mills’ homemade pie crust.

When I wrote in the library, the quiet room felt five degrees cooler than the rest of the library, perhaps ten degrees cooler than our house. Relatively speaking. In that room, I would pull my traveling sweater from my backpack and slip it on to keep my upper torso comfortable.  My hair worked to insulate my neck and ears.  Many times sitting at that long table I thought about Bob Cratchit gingerly trying to convince Scrooge to add another piece of coal to the stove.  That coolness in the library kept me focused and fueled the movement of words.  This morning it feels like 23 outside, and I have the window cracked behind me.  The temperature lacks equilibrium: the front of me is 70 degrees while my back is dipping down to 30 degrees.  If it weren’t for my fingers needing to touch the computer, I could rotate like one does standing next to a bonfire.  Or like how we twist the stick to perfectly roast a marshmallow over coals in the fireplace.

With our home’s normal room temperature, I keep my hair up in a ponytail or a clip.  Wisps that fall to the front aren’t cute or playful; they annoy me.  I keep rescue bobby pins in drawers upstairs and downstairs.  Grandma Mills often used those utilitarian tools to keep her thick hair in place as she worked in the kitchen or the garden.  At home, I finish the initial up-do with a bobby pin on either side anchoring predictable pieces that would otherwise soon loosen.  Around lunchtime, another piece of hair drops into my eyes; I inherently grab another bobby pin out of the drawer in the kitchen before cooking.  I go back to the same drawer when I come in from the wind.  I drift into Will and Liam’s rooms in the afternoon to check in and to grab laundry.  I collect the laundry basket from the master bedroom, put it down, and grab another bobby pin from my bathroom drawer.  At the end of the day, I feel my head for pins.  Before I went to bed last night, I took four of them out.

I marvel at the power that those little practical pieces of curved metal have in holding it all together. 

Thoughts about Reading Books

I’m up early again. 4:30 this morning.  Surely, I have won a prize.

I decided to read this morning.  An hour later, I switched to writing.  And the Word doc hadn’t been opened two seconds before I was where I had decided I wasn’t going to go today.  And I said out loud, “I better get out before I fall in.”

I’m trying something new: reading more than one book at a time.  I’ve always been a strict linear reader.  Read one book at a time and always finish a book.  A few years ago an avid reader friend said something like, “There are too many good books out there! If a book doesn’t get me in the first twenty pages, I put it down.” At those words, astonished, I put her in book warrior armor.  Up to that point, the only book I remember not finishing was Moby Dick when I was in college.  A pang of lagging guilt is still withstanding.

More recently, I read an article on how to read more than one book at a time.  The suggestion was to pick books from different genres.  That makes complete sense, for example, to read two or three romance novels at a time, one might get the love interests confused and end up with one crushingly gorgeous man and scores of long-haired woman chasing him in pursuit of a red rose.  That would be blurring the lines of romance novel reality.

An author friend loaned me a non-fiction book called The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd.  Last week I moved it from the book shelf into circulation, thinking it wouldn’t get too entangled in Paris Was the Place, a piece of fiction I’m reading, or rather listening to, for my book group.  I’m struggling with this piece of fiction; the voice on the Audible version is not pulling me into the story.  I need to go back to old-fashioned paper-page-turning reading of this title.

I rarely accept loaned books and am now practicing good loaned-book manners for The Barn…  Three rules apply: I can’t dog ear the pages at the top in order to mark my place; I can’t dog ear the pages at the bottom to mark passages to reread later; I can’t read with a pen in my hand to underline well-written lines that grab me by the hand, the throat, or the cuff of my neck.  Or the tear ducts.  I’m using a bookmark and snapping pictures of sentences.  This foreign procedure is tedious.  I strip my surroundings of pens before sitting down.  A fold can be smoothened; an ink underline is unforgiving.  I am enjoying the pencil underlining and notes that my friend made as she read the book.  I’m happy to see that she, too, makes notes.  Although hers are more reserved than my near graffiti black ink lines.

Over and over, I hear that writers need to be avid readers.  I’m not as avid as some.  In reading The Barn…, I am finding a relatable voice with relatable experiences.  A good boost in legitimating my own writing.  The author, Mary Rose O’Reilly, writes about working on a sheep farm.  We didn’t raise sheep when I was growing up.  Maybe an oddball sheep was brought into the fold occasionally.  I seem to recall a goat, a couple of rabbits, and perhaps a sheep rambling through my farmyard memories. 

O’Reilly has a conversation with the farmer she’s working with about the language used to call the sheep versus that used to drive the sheep.  Her words drove powerful holograms of my family right up off the page.  My mom milked cows morning and night.  After the grain was laid in the manger, she would open the barn doors to the feed lot and call, “Com’boss!  Com’boss!”  The lilt of those words were inviting.  It was like a chant. The accent was on “Com,” and “boss” dropped down in pitch.  And the cows would come gently lumbering into the barn, each to her own known stanchion.  I, like my mom, can call cattle.

On the other hand, the driving verbiage was dead-on Grandma Murphy and my dad when the cattle got out or were being driven somewhere they didn’t want to go.  As the sheep farmer laid it out in the book, “Don’t say ‘go!’ to them… They don’t know that word.  They know Hai! They know OK!  They know Hai-up, you goddam sonsa bitches!” (p. 64-65). That was an epiphany for me.  Over years and years of hearing those very same last four words strung together in repetition, never had I thought of it as a language the animals understood.  I only ever heard it as Grandma and Dad’s heightening anger at the cows.  Thinking back on these cattle driving moments, I remember how impressive this cussing was when those words were yelled over and over in one breath.  Their inflection was stronger than dropping any f-bomb in the middle of that tirade.  I, unlike Dad and Grandma, cannot drive cattle.

This morning I pulled a book of poetry off the shelf, New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012, written by Charles Simic.  When I attended the New York State Summer Writers Institute in 2018, I met this poet after he did a reading one evening.  A prolific poet, Simic was born in 1938 in Belgrade, Serbia.  I’ve only ever been attracted to children’s poetry.  In college, I struggled with poetry class, drawing blank looks at the smooth voiced professor trying to get poetry to connect with me, or vice versa.  Give me the rhymes of Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss. However, I laughed at some of Charles Simic’s poems as he read them, so I bought his book and waited in line for him to sign it.  I was the last person let into the queue.  I sat down across from him, and we chatted about ordinary people stuff for a few minutes.  Now, I’m reading about ordinary people stuff in his poems. 

In genres outside of fiction, I find more unfamiliar vocabulary.  Yesterday, I thought how efficient it was to tap a word into my phone and have the definition spring up.  Ideally, I would grab that definition, plug it into the sentence, and continue on my way with the next sentence.  Not so.  That is a mighty all-purpose detractor.  Many minutes passed before I moved from screen pages back to paper pages.  Today, I pulled Webster off the shelf and practiced letter sequencing as I looked up “Hittites” and “pitch.” 

Going to those pages reminded me of watching Will and Liam looking up vocabulary words when they were younger.  Another mom and I would laugh at how long it took our kids to look up ten words because they would start reading the dictionary.  Perhaps that was the teacher’s intent, for this morning I learned not only that Hittites are an ancient people from Asia Minor and northern Syria but also that another name for hobgoblin is bugbear.  I had only been looking for clarification of Simic’s poem titled “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites.”

Two days ago, I took a bubble bath and purposely left my phone in the kitchen.  While the bath tub was filling, I went into my bedroom to pick up The Barn…, but I had taken it downstairs earlier that morning.  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was in the book sculpture stacked on my bedside table.  I decided to try one of my son Will’s reading tricks: open a favorite book to a random page and start reading.   I sunk into the bath and into the line midway down page 71.

“Welcome,” said Hagrid, “to Diagon Alley.”  I followed Harry with the goblins down to the bowels of Gringott’s Bank through the brick wall on platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross and onto the glorious scarlet steam engine where Harry shared chocolate frogs with his new best friend Ron.  Sheer fantasy.  Potent escapism.

As Ron was explaining Quidditch to Harry, the real boy Liam called out to me from behind the bathroom door.  “Mom!  Mom!  Your phone is ringing! I don’t know if you have new texts or calls!”  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had planned on ignoring beeps and whistles until I came back downstairs.   

“Thanks, honey,” I returned as he delivered to my bath non-fiction with a splash of fiction, perhaps needing the intercedence of poetry.  Or fantasy.

Another random thirty-some-page escape is on the books for today; at which time, I shall put the phone securely under my mattress.

A Writing Exercise—Are you game?

On the days in recent weeks when I’ve sat down to write, I’ve been trying to write full, coherent pieces.  What I wrote yesterday is over 500 words, and I ran out of steam for the story line before I created an ending.  I think the moment is better set for a mosaic or staccato writing.  So, here, I unleash that beast.

Yesterday, I brought myself to finally bake the bacon that has been in the fridge for at least a week.  My family loves bacon, but the mess it involves leaves me procrastinating.  I pulled the bacon out of the oven, made toast, and put yogurt on the counter where we were going to eat together.  Liam came into the kitchen and said, “Wow, it’s just like Grandma’s in Iowa!”  My mom is like a patron saint of cooked breakfasts—me, reflecting on my normal breakfast prep—not so much.

On Saturday, Liam and I drove out to Salisbury Beach State Reservation, near the New Hampshire border, to go for a hike along the coast.  The tide was coming in but leaving little in the way of treasures other than the familiar mussel and clam shells.  The treasure-line thickened where the long jetty jutted out from the beach, somewhat marking the connection of the Atlantic Ocean with the Merrimack River.  It was in that nook that Liam found a mermaid purse!  I still marvel at the magic of these egg cases.  Sadly, this one had been damaged: there were puncture holes in the sides that were not hatching holes. 

Bill is traveling and will be back Wednesday, so he has missed the beginning of the Monopoly tournament, or rather the “Boston-Opoly” tournament.  Will, Liam, and I have the table set up in the basement and have played for an hour or so the last two nights.  I remember getting Monopoly for Christmas as a kid and playing a new game every morning of Christmas break with my sister and brothers.  I thought the game was pretty cut and dried: pass go, collect $200, collect rent, put up some houses, run out of money, pack up the game.  My kids learned how to play more creatively with their cousins in Iowa: “I’ll sell this to you if you let me land on it twice without having to pay rent,” or “If you don’t ask someone for rent before the next player rolls, you can’t collect,” or “I just want to sit in jail for a while; it’s safer to do that and collect rent than go around the board and pay rent.”  High rollers here. Rumor has it that Queen Elizabeth does not allow her family to play Monopoly.  I understand why as I shout, “Wait, wait wait!!!” every time someone lands on a property.  I need time to check to see if I own it and, if so, to collect rent; the boys seem to have their properties and the rent amounts memorized.  Until this tournament, where some rents are near $2,000, I never understood the luxury of sitting in jail while letting others circle the board. 

I woke up this morning before the sun came up.  The first time this has happened in a while.  Lately, I’m pulling more day out of the end of the day.  That is not me, never has been me, and should not be me.  Being up an hour or two before everyone else is where I find blissful quietude.  And with the quiet room at the library now unavailable, I made sure the dining room table was cleared and inviting before I went to bed last night.  I’m hoping to replicate the library experience: computer on the table, coffee to the right, glasses to the right, and a notebook and pencil to the right.  That notebook is for the outside world while I propagate words through my fingers in a protected space.  Should a fluttering thought enter, like making an appointment for an oil change or stopping at the grocery store for milk, my right hand can quickly jot that down and then return to the flow of words.  It doesn’t feel completely natural working at this table.  It’s round, and I usually write on rectangles.  How rigid I’ve become in the geography of where I write.  There is nothing to my left because at the library I sit at the far left hand side of the table. The curved edge of my table at home is distracting.

Ahh, I hear the coo of the mourning dove!  I was up before six and the dove just cooed.  It’s 6:25.  I win! I don’t know what I’ve won, but I do feel like I’ve won something. The dove must be the rooster of bird land as now there is quite a ruckus outside my closed window.

Last week, I started working with other local authors on a project called “Seniors Writing.”  We’re creating an introductory workshop for a local senior center to encourage the seniors to write. Each of us authors will lead quick 10-minute introductory sessions on poetry, journaling/emotional writing, and storytelling.  Depending on what type of writing the seniors enjoy, we’ll set up future workshops accordingly. 

I’m taking on storytelling with the focus of memories triggered by food. Would you like to be a guinea pig?  On a sheet of paper or on the computer, make a quick list of ten foods.  Next, pick one that jumps out at you.  That tickles your senses.  Pulls a smell from a past kitchen.  Makes your mouth water just thinking about it.  Reminds you of a friend or family member.  Now, write those thoughts down.  This can be in a list form written with crayons or markers; scattered hand-jotted thoughts on paper; or nicely structured sentences.  Follow a stream of thought without worry over punctuation or even complete sentences.  Those are overrated.  Often overrated.

If you would like to share your creation, pop your words into the comments below.  Or if you want a more private sharing experience, send them to me in an email.  Or, just keep them to your own delight.  I’m going to do this exercise as well; I’ll post mine by 6 p.m. today. 

(Well, look at that—I just gave myself a deadline! ;)

Enjoy…

(Are you wondering what mosaic and staccato essays are? Here’s my musing about Essay Styles.)