Author: Kathie

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

There’s a party going on in my bra. The women are BACK! (Just so you know, I have never referred to my breasts as “the girls”. That feels patronizing, disrespectful, and frankly, a little bit pedophiliac to do so.)

The right breast is a little more battle-scarred. A year after diagnosis, biopsies, surgery and radiation, she bears a patch of discolored skin, she’s swollen and strangely shaped, and she’s numb. The other one, biopsied just once, feels a little bit guilty that she escaped with less trauma, but she’s also got her own scar and she carries a little clip for future reference and future mammograms.

But they’re both okay. They’re fine.

I’M fine.

I had my year-later mammogram today. 3-D, bilateral, just ever so many ways to squash me, squeeze me, lean me, bend me, twist me, turn me, you name it. And then there was the wait for the results. Still robed, still near the mammogram machine, and with the full knowledge that the ultrasound machine, which would be the next step if things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to, was right down the hall. There was no piped-in music for me to hum to, and the book I’d brought along to keep me busy was left accidentally behind in my locker. There were magazines and  I know I paged through one while I waited, but I couldn’t tell you what I read. Mostly I turned pages, but stared at the clock, thinking, Isn’t this taking too long? This is too long. Something’s wrong.

But then the technician came back and cheered, “It’s all good!”

I held it together until I got to the dressing room. Then I cried.

What does this all mean? I don’t need a mammogram again for a year. I’m back on a regular schedule. I do have to see the medical oncologist every four months for now, and have bloodwork to show continued cancer-freeness. I need to continue to take the estrogen-squashing med that keeps this estrogen-feeding cancer away.

It means I’m okay.

After I pulled myself together, I got dressed and headed to the elevator. When I got to the first floor, the doors opened, and there was a man, about my age, facing the elevator and in the middle of sweeping his arms open in a grand game-show hostess-type gesture. He immediately looked embarrassed.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “I was pretending to use magic to open the elevator doors, and then they opened! And there you were!”

I smiled at him. “Well, thank you,” I said. “It worked. I was on the second floor and now I’m on the first.”

He laughed.

Everyone in this part of the building is dealing with cancer in one form or another. In all of its forms. Internally. Externally.

Everyone in this part of the building wants a little magic. They want to perform it. They want to receive it.

“In fact,” I said, “I just found out that the breast cancer I had last summer is gone. Poof! Disappeared. If your magic had anything to do with that, I am so grateful.”

And he lit up. He WHOOPED. And his arms swept open again and I stepped into them and received one of the best hugs of my life.

“Congratulations,” he said when he stepped back.

“Thank you.” I held onto his elbows. “Are you okay?”

His face went soft. He drooped, his chin tucking to his chest, his whole body just somehow sloping downward. But then he pushed his shoulders back and he looked me straight in the eye. “I will be,” he said.

It was my turn to give him a hug.  I hope it was one of the best he ever received.

“Magic,” I said.

He nodded. “Poof!”

Poof.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

  

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

I’ve been staring at the blank page for about five minutes now. One of the things I’ve pushed on myself with this blog is absolute honesty. Readers have told me that what draws them in is the rawness, the realness, the truth of experience that I write about. I’ve thought about that a lot this week and I’ve also thought about how last year, when I vowed that I would write one moment of happiness a day for a year, there was only one day that I wasn’t able to do it. I wondered if this would be another one of those days.

It’s been a very difficult week, for a number of reasons.

*Yesterday was the anniversary of my partial mastectomy. As these anniversaries have arrived – one year since bad mammogram, one year since diagnosis, one year since surgery – I expected to feel celebratory. I don’t. Instead, it’s as if all the emotions I held at bay then in order to get myself through the whole breast cancer crisis without falling completely apart are washing over me now.

*A situation happened at the grocery store where Michael works. We’ve been waiting for the last 48 hours to find out if he still has a job (again), and subsequently, if we will have the health insurance we thought we’d have by September 1^st. If he doesn’t, and we don’t, then the mammogram and bloodwork I was to have to make sure the cancer hasn’t recurred will not happen. I will go off the prescription I take to squash my estrogen, which keeps the cancer away. I will not pay for any more COBRA insurance. I simply can’t. It is exorbitant, it is ridiculous, and when it comes down to a choice between paying for the place that houses my family and my business or paying for overpriced insurance for overpriced medical care, the home will win every time. My international students tell me that if I lived in their countries, all my healthcare for breast cancer would be free. Imagine living in a country that values the health and well-being of its residents over the wallets of the insurance and medical industries. But…this is where I live.

*A friend lost his child to suicide.

I didn’t think I was going to find a moment of happiness this week.

That last item has been preying on my mind and heart. And the thing is, I know that I’m not doing what most are, thinking such thoughts as How could the child do it? Why would the child do it?  I’m not asking those questions because I know the answers. Too well.

I am a five-time survivor of suicide attempts.  Years and years ago now. But certainly fresh in my memory this week.

Now usually, when I say this (which is rare), I laugh and add, “Obviously, I’m pretty inept at that sort of thing.”  And I was. I’m me, you know, and I’m not known for taking the easy way out. Some think that suicide is the easy way out. It’s not. And even as a child, I identified as a writer and I had to find the metaphor in everything. So my attempts were also symbols. And I have to tell you, I’m laughing as I type this, even though I wasn’t laughing those five times. My attempts were creative, artful, colorful, definitely not cliché…and failures.

But now, after that admission that I rarely make, I am adding something new.

I’m beyond grateful that I failed. Five times. I’m grateful that I was inept.

And so there’s the moment of happiness I didn’t think I was going to have this week. There’s also the realization that maybe I was so inept because there was a grain in me somewhere that has always wanted to survive.

I have survived. Many things. And I’m happy to be here.

There is also, of course, the moment of irony. Now that I’m happy to be here, I might not be able to continue to have the medical involvement that helps to keep me here.

I will admit that I am down, down, down. Earlier this week, I brought a hammer upstairs to my office. I took the sand dollars, the one given to me by the man in the fog back in 2015 and the one the ocean placed at my feet a few weeks ago when I asked for a sand dollar to show me that I was going to be okay, down from my wall. I took them out on the deck, laid them on the floor and raised the hammer to smash them both to smithereens.

But I didn’t. I cried instead. And then I hung them both back on the wall.

I was told, I believe, that I would be okay. Okay doesn’t mean that I will have health insurance and continued treatment. Okay means that I will be okay with or without it.

Though I sure would prefer to be with it.

This week, I also handed in all the material for my poetry chapbook, When You Finally Said No, due out in February from Finishing Line Press. I had to write the dedication. This is what I wrote:

To all of us in this sisterhood that no one would ever choose to join.

There is light.

Breathe.

Live.

Yep.

This week’s moment of happiness: I am grateful I survived. Then and now. I am happy to be here.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

When you’re a writer, validity comes in small packages. Your name in a magazine. Applause in a bookstore. An email from a stranger who just had to tell you how your book or story affected him or her. Hopefully five bright stars on a review.

And boxes. Brown cardboard boxes, delivered by a harried UPS driver. Heavy brown cardboard boxes. Because they’re filled with your newest book.

And for me, filled with a book I didn’t even know I was writing. How does that happen?

Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Year Of Spontaneous Essays will be released on September 27^th by my publisher, Black Rose Writing. Ever since the idea of making my year-long blog into a book was broached and then solidified, the book just hasn’t felt real.

It’s a blog, for heaven’s sake.

It’s a blog of little pieces that I never ever intended for publication.

It’s a blog of little pieces that I didn’t edit – I wrote them once a day for a year, usually over about fifteen minutes, double-checked the spelling, and posted them. No editing. No polish. No careful scrutiny of word choice and arrangement. Raw.

A book?

All through the usual planning and putting together of Today’s Moment – the putting it into manuscript format, with the months becoming chapters (every day was in its own file – man, this was a Microsoft Word nightmare), making suggestions for the cover, seeing it erupt on my screen, new author photos, reading the blurbs for the back cover, getting the galleys, but other than looking for computer glitches, not changing a thing because that was the point of the original blog – it didn’t seem real. A book? I laughed every time I talked about it because at some level, I didn’t believe it. I write books: four novels, two short story collections, two poetry chapbooks. Today’s Moment – a book? I didn’t write a book. I wrote these little bitty posts. They started as Facebook statuses. Then blog posts.

A book?

Yesterday, I was waiting for a client to Skype me for a coaching session. She was running late, so I had to stick by my computer for when she called. When the doorbell rang, Michael answered it. He called up the stairs, “Are you expecting anything? There’s a bunch of boxes.”

Today’s Moment isn’t due out until September. I ordered books to have with me when I do appearances and events not associated with a bookstore. But this was only July.

And you know, it’s not really a book anyway.

“I’m not expecting anything,” I said.

“Well, there’s something here,” he said. Later, he told me he had an echo of this conversation when he said to the UPS driver, who was helping carry the boxes into the AllWriters’ classroom, “She has a book coming out, but they’re not supposed to be here yet.” “Looks like they are,” Mr. UPS said helpfully.

A book?

I met with my client. I wondered about the boxes downstairs, about what was inside. It had to be the new book. It had to be. But…but…but…

A book?

I finally went downstairs. There were six boxes in my classroom. I picked one and set it on the table. And I sliced it open.

Packaging paper. Chucked that to the side.

And there she was. The face of Today’s Moment. My name on the cover.

And right then, it became real. Real! Really really real!

I wrote a book without trying to write a book.

I wrote a book that people, readers, followers, ASKED to be made into a book.

I’m a freaking character in my own book.

And apparently…I can write even when I don’t think I’m writing.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Book #8 (and #9, a poetry chapbook, will be released in February).

Validity.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(By the way, you can pre-order Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Year Of Spontaneous Essays now, at 15% off, directly from the publisher.   http://www.blackrosewriting.com/biographymemoir/todaysmomentofhappinessdespitethenews

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

And what a horrific couple of weeks it’s been for news. How anyone can think of children being taken from their parents as their parents are deported and not be broken by that…it’s been a hard couple weeks. I think we’ve all been hugging our children even more closely than usual.

I couldn’t hug my children. I was off on my own writing retreat on the coast of Oregon. But I watched the news every night and ached.

Tomorrow, I bring my youngest, Olivia, to have her senior portrait taken. Senior. And on Saturday, we are going on the first of likely five college visits. A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of a massage and I was scrolling through my head as to what was next on my overstuffed agenda when that phrase “college visit” really hit me.

Oh my god, I thought. She’s going to be leaving me. And she’s the last. There will be no one left at home.

When I flipped from my back to my stomach for the rest of the massage, the therapist quietly handed me a Kleenex and I gratefully took it.

While I was away on retreat, I didn’t see or speak to Olivia all that much. The day before I left, I dropped her off at a special three-day leadership academy at a local college, so she wasn’t even home when I flew to Oregon. While I was gone, I phoned home every night via Facebook’s video messenger, but other than Olivia making a few appearances on the screen, I mostly talked to the dog and to my husband. Olivia is smack dab in the middle of the stay-in-her-room-with-headphones-plugged-in mode. Apparently, that held true even while I was gone.

I missed her, even though if I was home, she would be in her room behind a closed door. But in the house I was in, the bedroom where she sleeps when she accompanies me was empty. The door was open. Every morning, I drew the blind as if she was there and opened the window to let the sea air in. And I glanced at the still made bed as I walked by.

On Saturday, I left the little house and drove to Portland. Sunday, I climbed on board two planes and flew home. I wondered if Olivia would be at the airport. My husband was at work; my oldest son was coming to get me. I knew my granddaughter would be there. But Olivia? Not sure.

As I walked up the ramp which would take me away from the gates and back into familiar territory, I saw my son stand up and wave at me. The top of a bouncing brown-haired head bobbed at his side. I smiled. Hello, Maya Mae.

And then Olivia stood up. She looked right at me, burst into a smile and began to run.

It wasn’t my five-year old granddaughter that reached me first. It was my seventeen-year old soon-to-be-gone usually-locked-in-her-room daughter.

When she got to me, she threw her arms around my neck and she rested her cheek next to mine. That soft cheek, still the cheek of a newborn, of a four-year old with night terrors, an elementary school child who was bullied, a middle schooler who was finally told of her autism, and a high schooler who knocks my socks off with her intelligence, her compassion, and her determination.

That soft cheek. I didn’t scoop her up as I would have years ago. She’s no longer scoopable. But she bent down to me and there she was.

“Mama,” she said.

Mama.

Tonight, I told a student in the state of Washington about my obsession with the television show, The Waltons. I told him one of the things that drew me to the show was that the children, as they grew older, continued to call their parents Mama and Daddy. No Mom. No MUH-ther! Mama.

Mama. That soft cheek.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

A few mornings ago, I woke up laughing. I think the laughter evolved from a couple of levels – first, I was laughing at the dream I was having. But second – I was dreaming. And remembering it. And reacting to it.

Partway through radiation treatments for breast cancer last year, my dreams disappeared. I’ve always been a vivid, graphic, sharp dreamer, dreaming in color and stereo, and I always remember my dreams. But suddenly, they were gone. In its place was a great black void of beyond-exhaustion that reached up and pulled me in to a sleep that didn’t even feel like sleep. There were times I ran for my bed because I felt it coming on. And there were times when I literally did not remember my head hitting the pillow. This beyond-exhaustion just swallowed me up. And it swallowed my dreams up too.

At the same time, and for the only time in my life, I gave up writing. I couldn’t put words or thoughts together. That, more than anything else, more than the radiation, the surgery, the medication, even the word cancer and the uncertain future it brought with it, scared me. My dreams disappeared. My writing disappeared.

I disappeared.

I didn’t understand it. The radiation was on my right breast and lymph nodes. But somehow, the scrambling it was doing to my body also reached my brain.

The writing was first to come back, slowly but surely. I worked on a novel and, working on the third draft now, I can still see signs of the mess I was in. Stories came too, and poetry. And these weird little essays. I would say that I’m now back to writing at full force. Though there are some afternoons that the black void comes to take me again. When it does, I accept it. And then I write the next day.

But the dreams hadn’t returned.

Until I came here, to Oregon, to the magic little house by the ocean. And suddenly, one night, it was like someone hit a switch and that part of my brain turned back on.

Just like, on my first trip here, the light over the writing desk suddenly turned on by itself in the middle of the night.

I woke up laughing. And I remembered my dream. So what was it?

I was sitting in a writing class and the teacher was handing out little square pieces of glass. She said it was for a creativity exercise. When I received mine, I saw it had little shapes molded into it, shapes very similar to the seashells I’ve found on the beach. I held out my hand and she sprinkled more glass pieces into it, three-dimensional pieces that were glass versions of those same seashells.

“What are we supposed to do?” I asked.

She said, “Fit the correct glass shells into the shapes.”

I looked around. The other students were already hard at work. I sorted through the glass shells in my hand and ping, ping, ping, put them into their spaces. Easy peasy. “This is kind of silly,” I said. “This isn’t a creativity exercise.”

The teacher sat across from me, smoking a cigarette and smiling. She said, “Well, it makes about as much sense as me teaching you how to write.” Then she leaned forward and laughed.

And I laughed too. And woke up.

Today, I sat down for my morning of writing, which typically continues here until I get hungry and then I stop for lunch. But today, when I looked away from my screen, I found it was 3:30 in the afternoon. I’d written through my coffee break, my lunch break, any bathroom breaks. The world fell away from me today and I was fully lost in my story. And I was freaking starving.

I laughed then. And I laughed when I woke up from that dream. I am dreaming in full vivid color again. Not all the dreams are making me laugh. There was one so disturbing, it took me most of the day to shake it. But that’s okay. It goes with the imagination. It goes with the dreaming and writing brain. It goes with me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

This morning, I pulled on a brand new pair of jeans. I can only find these particular jeans when I am here, on retreat on the coast of Oregon. Bizarrely, they are at a Wal-Mart, but my Wisconsin Wal-Mart doesn’t carry them. Because I wasn’t able to come here last summer, due to breast cancer, it’s been two years since I pulled on a new pair of these particular jeans.

I bought two pairs. I might go back and get another.

After I pulled on the jeans, I went for a walk by the ocean. The jeans snugged me in a way that was crisp and new, but familiar. The sun fell on my shoulders. The ocean provided a rhythm my bones recognize and I stepped easily around detritus not found at home – jellyfish, crabs, scads of smoothed stones and broken shells. I watched cormorants and pelicans dive. Seagulls bobbled like popcorn on the waves. A bald eagle winged past. A not-so-lucky seagull became the meal of a vulture on the beach. I turned my face away. The blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean surrounded me with forever and timelessness.

One year and one day ago, I was in my shower, thinking about how I would word my Facebook status after my doctor called to tell me that the mass found in my right breast was a fluke. That phone call came in while I was still in the shower. I slammed the water off, held a towel to my forehead to keep the shampoo from streaming into my eyes, and answered the phone I’d perched on the toilet, because I knew the call would come when I was in the shower. It had to. That’s when all important phone calls occur.

My doctor’s voice is consistently cheerful, and it remained cheerful when he said the biopsy was positive. I heard cheerful and I heard positive and I thought, well, positive is a good word. It’s good news.

I learned that day that positive is sometimes negative.

When we hung up, I turned the shower back on, and I cranked the faucet to the highest temp possible. And then I slid down to a sit on the floor of the tub and I cried.

What followed was a mass of new things and experiences and words: ultrasounds, MRI’s, partial mastectomy, Stage 1, no, Stage 2, but Grade 1, radiation, maybe chemotherapy, no chemotherapy, but burn, baby, burn in 20 rounds of radiation, skin forever differently colored, an ice cream scoop dollop out of the right breast, and a breast itself that is numb and no longer feels soft, but firm and unforgiving like a soccer ball.

It’s been an adjustment. I learned that positive could mean negative.

But today. One year and one day after the start of all that. I pulled on a new pair of jeans and relished them. Every seam, every pocket, every thread of blue denim. I walked in the new and rejoiced in the old and felt the heat of the sun and the rhythm of a timeless ocean. I soaked in the blue. I soaked in it.

I’m still here. And I’m wearing new blue jeans. After a period of time where I thought the jeans I owned and wore threadbare would be my last.

Not only have I learned that sometimes, a positive can be negative, but also, sometimes, a negative can turn positive.

If I could’ve hugged the ocean today, I would have. If I could’ve hugged the whole world today, I would have.

Instead, my jeans hugged me. And I soaked in the blue. Blue jeans, blue sky, blue ocean.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Being here is so much.

–Rilke

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

–Julian of Norwich

 

I arrived yesterday in my favorite place in the world, a little house next to the Pacific Ocean in Waldport, Oregon. But my landing at the airport in Portland wasn’t so gentle. Months ago, I arranged a package deal with Expedia which included a phenomenal rate on a rental car. I thought I’d paid in advance for all of it, but when I got to the rental counter, they told me I hadn’t. We went through round after round, which included the absolutely ridiculous “We can’t accept your business’ credit/debit card because it doesn’t have your personal name on it, and you have to pay with something that has the name of the driver on it,” which ultimately ended with me leaving the counter in tears and heading back to the airport, figuring I’d just have to give up and go home.

A man at a different rental counter saw me crying and asked what was going on. When I told him, we hunkered down together and he figured out where the mistake was and we fixed it. When I called the original rental company and explained, they said my car was “gone”, and “there aren’t any others.” The nice man at the new counter said he had cars and he rented me one. Which was wonderful. But it was also a rent-on-the-day-of price…seven times more expensive than the great deal I thought I had.

I took it. I thanked the nice man profusely and I drove out of there and three hours to the ocean in tears. I’d just used money that was earmarked to pay for our COBRA insurance for the next couple months, until the insurance from Michael’s new job starts up. There was nothing to replace it.

I felt like the most selfish woman, no, human being on the face of the earth. Not only was I on this trip by myself in the first place, but now I used the only money I had saved up for our insurance. Rather than turning around and going home. I chose myself over practicality. But it didn’t make me feel good. I was wracked with guilt and shame.

Things happen to me in Oregon, at this house. I can’t explain them. Some say “the veil” is thin. Maybe it is, if there is a “veil” at all. But when I arrived to my little house, I was ragged and miserable. I dropped everything on the counter and table, ran through the house, threw open the patio doors, and chugged down the dune to the beach. I don’t think I’ve ever moved so fast across sand. And then I stood by the ocean and amazed myself when the first words out of my mouth were, “You told me I was on the right path, but you didn’t tell me that included breast cancer!” I thought I’d cried in the car. I thought I’d cried over the last year. That wasn’t even close to the rip tide that came out of me then.

Did I mention that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the day my routine mammogram became not routine at all?

(By the way – if you don’t know the story of the sand dollar and how I was told I was on the right path, it was in the original Today’s Moment blog series. It will be included in the book when it’s released in September.)

When I got my voice back, I just said, “Help me. Help me. Help me.” Over and over. The ocean, a distance from me, rolled in then, and stopped just at my feet.

I don’t ask for help. I do things myself. It’s the best way to get things done.

By the time I went to bed, I was still frazzled. A much-loved student emailed to let me know he was sending something to help me with the unexpected car bill and that I needed to stay in Oregon to rest and heal. I also received my final bill from the place where I hold the studio’s retreat. In it was a note that they were giving me a discount because of issues with the wifi there. I barely noted these things and then I fell into bed. I slept for 13 hours. The ocean is a lullaby. It’s a mantra.

It wasn’t until the morning that the math rose up in my brain. Are you ready for this?

I cried to the ocean, “Help me. Help me. Help me.”

The amount that the student is sending me and the amount of the discount received from the retreat place, added together, comes to within two dollars of what I had to spend on the rental car. Two dollars…to the better.

I walked out to the ocean this morning. I didn’t wait for her to come to me, but I walked out to where the waves curled in and then stopped at my toes. “Thank you,” I said. And then I repeated it with every step of my morning walk.

I am not a person of faith. Nor do I subscribe to any religion.

But the veil is thin here. My shoulders loosen and I breathe better. At home and in the studio, I am the penultimate caretaker…but here, I am taken care of. I am heard.

All will be well and all will be well. Thank you.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

One morning, as I finished up with a coaching client, we fell to chatting. “Kathie, tell me,” she said, “about you and coffee.”

Me and coffee.

I get asked a lot of things, by students, clients, readers. Most common is the question about my writing process. Next in line is the question about how I get so much done. But I was never asked before about me and coffee. It is a love affair. Coffee drives my heartbeat, flows through my veins, is the first to say good morning to me every day. We are soulmates. Attached at the lips.

Coffee and I met when I was in the second or third grade. I lived in way northern Minnesota and I walked to school, so my mother wanted me to have something hot at breakfast. There was already a percolator of coffee, so it was an easy thing to give me a cup. I took one sip and then reached for the sugar bowl. Five heaping teaspoons later, I had coffee so thick and sweet, I had to stir it between every sip. And I was hooked.

Coffee and I became constant companions. I discovered coffee-flavored candy and coffee-flavored ice cream. My father came from Connecticut and we spent some time out there every summer, always lugging home a carton or two of coffee-flavored syrup that was made on the east coast. We put it in milk and over ice cream. It was my favorite part of our trip.

Interestingly, that syrup showed up in one of Wally Lamb’s books. Reminded of it, I looked for it on Amazon, found it, ordered it, tried it…and hated it. It tasted like chemicals, which it likely was.

I started drinking gas station lattes and cappuccinos somewhere in my mid to late thirties. You know, the kind made by a machine that coughs out a dusty powder and adds hot water. But no more, except in an emergency. Because eventually, I answered that caffeinated siren song.

Starbucks.

Yes, I know. Big corporation. Support the little guy. But I do. I have my favorite drink in every little coffee shop around town. But Starbucks has my drink-to-end-all-drinks. The grande cinnamon dolce latte with only two pumps of syrup please. Extra hot when it’s cold out. Iced when it’s hot. Delicious all the time. I don’t even need to order anymore. I just call into the speaker, “Hey, it’s Kathie.”

Last July, on the day I had my partial mastectomy, my son drove to Starbucks for me, post-op. He called out my order, written down for him so he’d get it right, into the speaker. There was a pause, and then the speaker-voice said, “Is this for Kathie?” My son said yes. My cinnamon dolce, extra hot, just two pumps of syrup, arrived with well-wishes written all over the cup. And it was on the house.

Best cinnamon dolce ever.

I asked for coffee after the births of all four of my children. At the reception of my first wedding, my silver engraved wine goblet held coffee. I’ve held coffee in my hands as I’ve gazed at the ocean, at sunsets, at the rare (for me) sunrise. When I launch books, teach classes, present workshops, I usually have a mug of coffee in my hand. If a moment is important…there’s coffee. Times of elation, times of sadness, times of frustration…coffee.

But the best part?

Meeting someone in a coffee shop. Student, friend, family, lover. Looking at that person over the rim of my mug. Dreams mixed in the steam and someone else’s eyes. Wrapping my hands around the mug, soaking in the heat. Sometimes, someone’s hands wrapping over mine, so I am encased in warmth. Good conversation. Good coffee.

“Coffee makes me happy,” I said to my client that morning.

It does.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

I’ve never been a mani/pedi sort of woman. In my lifetime, I’ve had one pedicure and two manicures, all gifts from well-meaning students. Way too many years ago, when I was in grad school, a friend pulled me aside and painted my toenails. I didn’t know why then, and I don’t know why now. But from that point on, I painted my toenails during sandal seasons because I felt like it was something I was expected to do, something I’d made a grievous social mistake by not doing, With the arrival of the robin and sixty-degree temps, a simple color sprouted on my toes. And when winter came, I shoved my feet into socks and shoes and forgot about them.

A few days ago, when it finally began to get warm, I chucked my jeans and my socks and my sneakers and pulled on capris and sandals. Then I looked down. And cried.

The medication I have to take for breast cancer recovery for the next five years causes severe joint pain. It also takes conditions like fibromyalgia or arthritis and puts them into overdrive. I have fibro. My body has become the 3-D definition of pain. I’ve lost a lot of my flexibility and in particular, my hips have grown tight. On this day, I looked down, and realized there was no way in hell I was going to be able to flex enough through the pain to paint my toenails, let alone trim them.

Prior to this, I’d asked for help from those in my home and let’s just say the response wasn’t enthusiastic. On this day, when I dried my tears, I called a local salon and asked if they could fit me in for a pedicure. No time slots were open. So I hung up the phone and cried again.

And then I grimly got out my nail clippers and my polish. I moved around the house and shrieked my way through a bajillion bodily contortions. When I was done, I wiped the sweat from my face and the new tears from my cheeks and looked at my toes.

I did an absolutely horrific job. It looked like I attacked my toes with a machete.

Tears again. I threw off the capris and kicked my sandals into the closet. The jeans came back on, and so did the socks and shoes. It was going to be a sneaker summer, I decided. And cried some more.

Later, of course, when I undressed for bed, I discovered that the polish wasn’t quite dry yet when I changed into socks and now my nails sported stuck-on white fuzzies and threads.

Sigh.

Today, it was warm again. And instead of tears, I got angry. It was spring. I needed to paint my toes or commit some kind of social sin I didn’t understand. Why do women have the need to decorate their toenails and fingernails? Why was this tying me in knots? I marched over to Walgreens in my sneakered feet and bought nail polish remover.

At home, I tore off the shoes and socks and then looked around for ways to apply ingenuity. I have a footstool that breaks from top to bottom into three equal pieces. I sat down and separated these and placed two so that my legs would jut out at my body from an angle. No more leaning straight over my legs. Instead, I would lean forward into the gap between my angled legs and then turn at my waist. Carefully, I scrubbed each digit with smelly polish remover. I scrubbed until my own naturally pink nails came back, clean of gummed-up botched polish and white fuzzy sock detritus.

I sat back and breathed a sigh of relief. But then I saw my abandoned polish out of the corner of my eye. I’d found a way to remove the polish without killing myself. So…maybe…

But why? Why the need to change what was perfectly fine, au naturale?

I thought back to my friend painting my nails in grad school. And I thought of how I’d done it ever since. Every summer. It was a normal life thing.

More than anything, I want to return to my normal life. Cancer-free.

Painted nails in sandal season.

Spreadeagled, I propped my feet back up at angles and I set to work. It was harder than removing the offending polish. But I moved slowly and carefully and when it hurt, I sat back and gave myself a breather before leaning forward again.

The end result? Not bad. Not perfect. But no machete in sight.

Normal. Normal life. Some days, you’re just grateful you can paint your nails.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Early this week, I was stopped at a stoplight as I went to pick up Olivia from school. There were happy shrieks coming from a playground, so I took a look. Running from the swings to the slide and playhouse and back again were two girls. I watched as they ran and shrieked and played with abandon. They weren’t in Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls, but oh-so-today ripped jeans and crop tops. Their hair was flying, but it was a controlled fly, held with perfectly placed headbands and clips. They were at least middle school age, maybe high school.

But they played. As the light turned green and I pulled away, I fell headlong into a memory.

One week before my first wedding, back in June of 1981, when I was a month shy of my twenty-first birthday, I had a sense of sinking, not elation. I was going to be married. I wasn’t even out of college yet. I hadn’t yet worked a full-time job. I hadn’t had the responsibility of bills and paying rent on apartments and utilities and owning a car. Yet I was getting married. And no, I wasn’t pregnant. I was so overwhelmed with potential adultness, adultness that I felt I had to face if I was going to take those steps down the aisle and take that man as my husband in front of my friends, my family (especially my parents, who said that my choice of husband was the only thing I’d ever done right in my life – hence the wedding that I wasn’t really ready for, but I was bound and determined to finally earn that approval), the priest, and ultimately, God. I was frozen with fear and worry and trepidation.

Then, out on a date one week before the wedding with the couple who were to be our best man and maid of honor, Bob, the best man, pulled over by a city park. “Let’s get out here,” he said.

Here? We were by a playground.

He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out of the car. As we walked toward the swings, my soon-to-be husband followed, as did Bob’s fiancé. I started out slow. I bounced a little on the bouncy horse, my knees up to my chin. I let my fiancé spin me on the merry-go-round. I began to laugh when we sat on the see-saw and at its height, our feet still touched the ground.

And then I got on a swing. I flew. As my toes pointed toward the sky, I was six years old again, and I was hopeful and dreamy and the world was possible and I was possible and I could do absolutely anything.

Even walk down the center aisle of a church and get married, when I was oh so uncertain.

When we returned to the car, sweaty, dirty, giggling, Bob said, “You better now?”

“Yes,” I said.

And I wondered about the young man who picked up on my mood and my needs more than the man I was marrying. But it didn’t stop me. A week later, I was married.

It didn’t last, really. Well, it did, for seventeen years and three beloved children. But then I finally acknowledged the mistake I made and I left. You could say I pointed my toes toward the sky again that day.

On this day, at soon-to-be 58 years old, I soared again at the memory. My spirits lifted, like my toes did, thirty-eight years ago. I didn’t stop to play on the playground because I had a child to pick up, and because with my luck, I would likely get dizzy and fall off the swing, breaking a hip, a leg, an arm. But not my heart.

“You better now?” Back then, when I was almost 21, playing on a playground reminded me of potential, of play, of life, of profound joy. And now, at almost 58, the memory provided me the same thing.

When my daughter and I took off for our next stop, her job at a grocery store, she snarled about being old (she’s 17) and having to work and not being ready to be a grown-up. Later that night, my husband walked in and said, “I’m tired of adulting.”

I thought of those swings, my toes and the sky. I see a playground in our near future.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.