A New Job

The constant is change. I’m taking a new job starting in mid October and oh my, I had forgotten how hard it is to leave a job. There’s some thinking I need to adjust. I’m leaving a small organization and there is a lot to do to be able to leave and to make sure that everything is in place and that things are in good shape for the person who will follow me. Yes, just a touch of perfectionism! Ok, more therapy for that!

I’m excited but tired. Sad but happy. Nervous but encouraged. I’m looking forward to my new colleagues and to work that I can throw all of me into and to being part of a team again.

Will this change our relationship? I worry about that. John says no, but hey, he’s a guy. For today it’s all to the good and will be if I worry less and sleep more.

Married Life

People keep asking me if it feels different to be married. Yes and No. No because we still live in the same apartment, the grocery list is more or less the same, I still use my favorite Sharpies to mark the newspapers before he reads them, I buy two half gallons of milk at the same time and he still shakes his head (but we never run out—or low).

But different too because something—some teeny anxiety --has settled down inside of me. Different also because I think about his family now as my own as well—and gratefully they have reciprocated so I have these wonderful in-laws and extended family. There is a little bit more “we” in my vocabulary though knowing my old tendencies I’m careful to not lose the “I” as I know that is the surest way for me to lose the “we” and the happiness I’ve found.

Sexual Healing

I do believe that sex is life giving. It is for me. Maybe I overestimate the power of sex or my own sexual power but there are moments when I think, “Every time he has an orgasm I am saving his life.” Ok, maybe that’s a kind of a ramped up, X-rated Florence Nightingale but there is something to it. Libido is life force. An orgasm is “le petit mort”—a little death. Sex is a little life and a little death.

A Man A Can A Plan

I am NOT a good cook. Let’s get that straight. But I like to play with food and I LOVE cookbooks! I have tons of cookbooks which makes everyone laugh when they see the shelf in our kitchen. But it’s the culture, language, history, social-psych thing.

Tonight I made a meal from one of my favorite “weird” cookbooks. I have a whole category of weird cookbooks: The Beet Cookbook, The White Trash Cookbook (quite extraordinary in every way) and today’s pick, a cookbook called: “A Man. A Can. A Plan.” This is a cookbook for men who can’t cook—bachelor of a certain era, divorced guys, it’s written very guy—explains what utensils are—“grab one of those big spoons with holes in it”. And it’s made of that very thick, shiny cardboard, the kind of paper used for books for babies. But the cool part is that the recipes are based on food that comes in cans. Yes my dear friends who only eat organic or local or vegan will DIE. So die. There is good food in this book—Think Grandma. Think church supper.

Tonight’s yummy casserole was “Spaghetti Western”:

Two cans of Spaghetti O’s. One can black beans. Half pound ground round, two chopped scallions, 2T grated cheddar, 2T chili powder. Cook all in one pan. Six minutes tops.

Add nice salad: Baby spinach, Bibb leaves, a tomato, salt & pepper, juice of half lemon and olive oil.

Dinner was ready in under ten minutes and it was delicious (And there are leftovers)

One serving: 500 calories and 14 grams of protein. Which means I can have biscotti and ice-cream while we watch another episode of “To Serve Them All Our Days.”

Death Weeps

September 12 2001

Even the dead weep at a time like this.
All those on the other side, making preparations to welcome such a large group.
Death is going door to door in New York City walking past doormen, going up dark stairways, down halls and taking the train to Long Island and Connecticut and getting off at little Cheeveresque stations in the suburbs.
Death nears exhaustion, leaning in one more doorway, waiting for the buzzer to be answered. Hesitating, sighing, tired.
She has tears in her eyes as she visits another house, and another and another.
At night death goes down to the site and sits on the rubble wishing it wasn’t true.
Some of the dogs come and sniff at death, then back up and give her a funny look.
Even death is too tired to be moved.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Yesterday, Labor Day, we went to Yankee Stadium to see his New York Yankees and my Baltimore Orioles. It was a perfect end of summer. And, also, a kind of unofficial end to our honeymoon. We managed to stretch our post-wedding travels from art and history in Paris to sand and salt at the beach, then to joy and frustration on the golf course and finally ending the summer and our honeymoon at Yankee Stadium with an Orioles win!

I realized watching the game that we have so much in common and so many differences. We do like many of the same things: Literature, music, baseball and golf, but we like them for different reasons. I love a live baseball game. I love the look and smell and sound and history and arcane sports trivia. I like knowing how baseball impacted history and how it has come to be the perfect spiritual metaphor. And John, well, he cares about the actual score—winning and losing. How ‘bout them O’s?

And now, the day after Labor Day, it’s a new year. Time for new pencils and red plaid shirts and knee sox and loafers. I still want new loafers every September. Though I’ve moved from Bass to Cole Haan to eyeing Chanel. New shoes, new life, new start.

Excerpts from Yglesias's A Happy Marriage

“He was vigilant. He no longer feared that one of her infections would kill her, as he had in the early days when cure was a real possibility. The end was inevitable and very near. She had to die of something because cancer does not kill alone. It kills with accomplices, so why not a sepsis?”

“He talked in narrative spurts sorely in need of punctuation and editing, without proper endings or middles. It was a symptom of fatigue and an adaptive response to the way most people reacted to his wife’s frightening illness: they interrogated Enrique intrusively about the logistics of Margaret’s battle while carefully avoiding discussion of its denouement…When he raised the subject of victory or defeat for Margaret, and friend were quick to end the conversation, he would intone to himself in a whisper: “I am become Death, the destroyer of chitchat.”

“In truth, he could find no comfortable place to sit in the company of her illness. He would feel guilt and shame no matter how he behaved. She was going to die and he was not; in the undeclared war of marriage, it was an appalling victory.”

Happier than Fiction

I’m a writer and a reader, yes. But sometimes so amazed, delighted and wondrous at finding a story in fiction that is so perfect for my life.

The day before we left for our honeymoon, I grabbed a new paperback from the shelf at my local bookstore. The title attracted me: “A Happy Marriage”. The perfect thing for a honeymoon, yes?

Yes. “A Happy Marriage” by Rafael Yglesias. His 5th novel. He also wrote “Fearless” which is one of my favorite movies. But this happy marriage is a stunning tale. It is to some degree the story of Yglesias’ own marriage. The courtship, love affair, struggle and finally devastation—all still in love—as Yglesias cared for his wife who was dying of cancer.

Coincidence? Act of God? Just literature doing what it does? Literature giving a wedding gift?

Literature on its own and the literature of caregiving. Intensity of language and of medicine. Man and woman. Husband and wife. Sickness and health. Until death or “The end.”

Paying--Too Much--Attention

I can get a little crazy in the land of Love and Cancer. There can be such a thing, I think, as too much intimacy: When John goes to the bathroom in the early morning I listen. I try not to but I do. Oh yuck, I know, but true.

I am paying attention to the sounds. Does he take a long time? diarrhea? constipation? I listen and gauge. I’m worried about his colon. The part he’s missing and the part he still has. When we are making love and my face is inches from his scrotum and I see the small patch of brown skin I wonder. “How long has that been there? melanoma? testicular cancer? His cough in the morning; normal? allergy? lung cancer?

Saint Paul said, “I die daily”, and he meant surrender. I kill John daily, and that means the sad vigilance of cancer and caregiving.

Cancer Men

This is just too good! I found this when searching for info on love and cancer:

Cancer men are incredibly appealing to many women. Cancers seem to have insight into what makes a woman fall in love. They are creative, passionate and loyal. When you meet a cancer for the first time you may be instantly smitten. They have been known to sweep a woman off her feet after only a few short dates.

Le Marriage

We are married. A small wedding. Our families and the close friends who have been our support for several years. Laughter, tears, cancer as a wedding guest—everyone recognized cancer as one of the attendants. We wrote vows that included being faithful—yes, I know—and that included “in sickness and in health”—knowing what that really means. We had great food, a lot of poetry, books, statues of Mary, our dear stuffed Babar and blue ribbons everywhere.

Then we flew to Paris and walked and ate and walked and ate and made love with windows wide open in the City of Lights.

Married

Yesterday, August 15th, John and I were married. A small ceremony in a school house. Family and friends with us. Beautiful flowers. Lots of laughter. Great cake. And this poem:

“Afternoon, in a Back Yard on Chestnut Street,” by David Keller


Here are a man and a woman, being married.

The entire world of summer lawns

holds its breath for the event. The trees

around them are lovely, displaying the small

breath and motions of August. The couple glance

at one another. Where has the moon gone,

the requisite moon? Nearby, a mother

begs her child, “Try to remember;

when did you have it last?” Oh,

impossible mystery. Where is joy

when it is not here? Time says nothing.

These things can happen, and will,

while children at the yard’s border play

among grown-ups tasting the summer’s wine.

Memory looks at its watch, smiling.

The moon will begin to come round

the way it always did but we’d forgotten.

The lovers touch hands and think of

some place they want to be, and go there.

The child, happy at last,

has remembered where its lost ball is.

In the garden the pink phlox and the lilies

show off, between the old moon

here in the hot sky and the one to come.

Everyone hugs or shakes hands

and walks off toward the future, waving.

The man and woman look at each other.

They know it means happiness, this year. They do.

My Hero

I’ve been debating all day about whether I can write this. “Too corny”, I thought. And “maybe I won’t feel this way tomorrow”. No, of course not; I’ll feel something else tomorrow. But today—all day—I thought, “He is my hero”.

John is my hero. We have been through so much crap with cancer and divorce and just life in the past two years that I sometimes forget that we have been friends for more than ten years. Ten years of coffee and books and ideas and laughter and too many cookies and cupcakes and hearing each other’s work questions and the juggling of reading and writing for both of us. We met as teachers and became friends, pals, annoyances, confidants, secret fantasies, outright fantasies, refusals, comforters, advisors, infatuations, lovers and partners. But always friends.

Now hero.

He is my hero.

Corny? Yes. But after all of the above corny is great!

The High Cost of Not Dying

It may be too hard to read if you have cancer but if you have a loved one with cancer you must read the Annals of Medicine article by Atul Gawande in the August 2 2010 issue of the New Yorker magazine.

With compelling stories and plenty of grey in a black and white world Gawande invites us to consider what it means to be dying—especially of cancer—when there is no end of treatments and procedures that can be tried, applied and administered.

Most interesting is his challenge to us about how death itself has changed because we no longer stop and let a person experience it.

This excellent essay walks us through the very high cost of cancer in both dollars and healthcare system costs and the cost to us as people when we treat cancer as a problem to be fixed. We lose not just dollars but part of our humanity—and for those of us who care for or have cared for someone with cancer—we lose an essential piece of being a loved one in the truest sense of that term.

This August 2 issue is on newsstands or at your local library. Check it out. Make copies to share with friends. Talk about it now.

If My Husband Ever...

“If my husband ever…”. Yes, with each round of celebrity infidelity we engage in the age-old game of, “If my husband ever…”. At 56, I’ve played this many times at lunch tables and water coolers and sitting on the floor in a girl friend’s living room. But at 56 I’ve also taken enough early morning phone calls from many of those same friends to know that even if you think you know what you’d do if you discovered a partner’s infidelity, you don’t.

Some leave at once, some never leave, some forgive, some don’t. Sometimes the ones that forgive stay but sometimes leaving is the route to forgiveness. Most chilling, I think, are those that never leave, never separate and never forgive. They keep up appearances—maybe are even envied by others for their perfect marriages which are glued together with hatred and spite.

The agony of infidelity does not discriminate. There is enough to go around. I’ve played all the parts: scorned wife, secret lover, other woman—and the friend who knew. There are no winners. No one has more or less pain.

Now, a new novel comes pretty close to accurately depicting each of those points of view. It’s a great read and even better as a book on CD to listen to in the car or at the beach.

If you have ever said, “I’d never” to any part of the extramarital triangle take a look at: “Heart of the Matter” by Emily Giffen.

Sex and Intimacy

It’s been a long time coming but finally an article about sex and cancer. Check out this very good article in the Summer 2010 issue of CURE Magazine. Written by Lacey Meyer the article discusses the challenges, feelings, fears and the shame. The article talks about libido, erectile dysfunction, hormonal changes and the conversations required. Yes, she does include the requisite bit on cuddling—oh please! But brave Lacey Meyer she also talks about masturbation and vibrators and pleasure.

Here is the link:

http://www.curetoday.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/article.show/id/2/article_id/1484

Coaching Cancer

Last night a very moving moment on ESPN. Coach George Karl of the Denver Nuggets spoke passionately about his experience with cancer. First prostate and then throat and neck cancers. He spoke about being a man committed to winning and making a career pushing himself and others to be strong and win every time. He spoke movingly about the kind of winners and fighters he met in cancer treatment rooms and said, “I was not the bravest one in those rooms, many are braver than me facing those treatments for cancer.”

He addressed the live audience and the ESPN viewing audience asking for government commitment to fight cancer. And he asked that the United States government match dollar-for-dollar what is raised by the American Cancer Society and other cancer foundations.

What stood out was how much this big, strong man had suffered in his cancer treatment and was still suffering in his recovery from treatment. We so often forget that part. People with cancer have to survive both the cancer and the sometimes quite brutal treatments for cancer. That second phase can take a very long time.

“Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”



---Saul Bellow

My Happiness is My Business

I’ve been grumbling today. My to-do list is too long. I’m achy and tired. I’m mad at John. I’m mad at John because his list is not as long as mine. And he doesn’t sweat the small stuff in the ways that I do. But in my head I’m making my case: “It’s all up to me; look at all I do; I’ll never get it all done; how can I feel sexy or happy when I have all this to do?” Etc.

Then this thought came to me: My happiness is not his business. Many of the things on my list are there because I care about details. I coordinate and I make things match and I’m a nut about following up with friends; I have a long list of self-care tasks that I do because I want to and I have two jobs and I love to read, dance, play golf, exercise and take classes. Yeah, the list is too long, but it’s mostly my list.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this fresh thought. My happiness is my business. When I try to make my unhappiness his business then I’m making me a victim. Wow.

Chemo Love Therapy

Kisses that last at least ten seconds and hugs of at least six seconds increase the flow of oxytocin and serotonin. Oxytocin is the love chemical that promotes bonding, and serotonin, as we all know, is the happiness drug.

XOXOXOXOXO