About The Fault In Our Stars

“You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing”–Augustus Waters, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

Thank you, John Green, for writing this incredible book that made me think and laugh and cry. So many things about THE FAULT IN OUR STARS resonated with me that my thoughts feel scattered into a far off, peculiar constellation.

Ten years out from having cancer, I realize that I have largely been stuck in a post-cancer head space.

Time moves apace, but a part of me is often in that chair watching chemicals drip down the tubing into my vein. It keeps me from the next poem, the next chapter, from loving as deeply as I should.

I, too, do not want to detonate.

Knowing that I might have died, not knowing that I might someday be again in the might die is paralyzing.

I can spread the peanut butter on one side of the bread, smooth the jelly on the other side and slap them together. I can take the wet clothes from the washer and put them in the dryer, but the might, the maybe, the percent and possibility is always there, just one beat behind me.

(Maybe that’s why I run from my car to the house on dark nights? It’s not a physical threat I feel, it’s the fear, as Hazel put it, of “the universe’s need to make and unmake all that is possible.”)

No doubt Hazel Grace could write this post with much more eloquence than I am mustering at this moment.

I am glad, ecstatic, guilt ridden that I survived. Scared, angry, hallelujah hell yes happy and nervous that I survived. When happy I see the shadow of the anvil. When sad I see the sun coming up in the terrible sky and am reminded that the tenacity of my foothold is a mere scratch in the dirt.

Blogger’s Dance…Respect!

Okay.

So, I tend to swing from the completely ridiculous (Superhero, The Tampon Warrior) to the fairly depressive here at Kvetch Mom. Writing about the cancer stuff is making me angsty, so I decided to blow off some steam with my blogging girlfriends in a Blogger’s Dance .

Thank you to my brilliant soul sisters for the inspiration (and big hairy balls): HouseTalkN (rocking the Ellen Degeneres), Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms (pole dancing, who knew?!) and The Bearded Iris (best Sprinkler I’ve ever seen).

Herewith you will find that I need Botox and a haircut and probably fresher dance moves. Features a guest appearance by T Funky Fresh H to the E O. Music by my favorite artist in the world, the great Aretha Franklin.

I dedicate this dance to my beloved Geri Broder Murray.

Adventures With Cancer, Part 3

PART 3

The fine linen tablecloth is cool and rough against my cheek. A glass filled with ice water has one small drop rolling down the side.

Things seem to be moving in stop motion. Forks ring against plates, a dark-haired woman at the next table stands, pushes her chair back. Her pants swish rhythmically as she passes by.

Bathroom. Yes, I think.

My mother’s almond eyes follow me as I pull my head up from the table and walk toward the back of the restaurant.

It is my soon to be husband’s birthday.

My parents have flown to New York. We know I have cancer but not what type. My prospective in-laws make small talk over many impossibly small plates of gravlax, pickled herring, sweet shrimp crudo.

The white pill my mom tucked into my hand earlier that evening has settled over me and I’m moving as if through liquid. I am not tranquil but rather a storm that has been blown slightly off trajectory, weakened.

It is several minutes before I realize I’ve been standing in the bathroom staring in the mirror as hot water runs over my hands. It is the rip of paper against a jagged edge that sets me in motion.

We go home. Sleep.

My parents are in the office the next morning awaiting our arrival. My mother is dressed up. I feel like she might take my picture. Give me a spray of flowers for my wrist. Compliment my cap and gown. I am commencing into an after.

We are taken back to a small, light filled office. The computer screen is dark. There are no sharp implements. No hand drawn pictures of stick figure children.

My father pulls a tiny plastic bottle of Scotch out of his jacket pocket. He has saved it from the airplane. We each take a sip and my father presents it to the oncologist as she walks in the office.

How the hell did you end up here? she asks.

I love her immediately and with a strange ferocity. I want to climb into her lap and smell her hair.

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

My fingers and stomach are tingling. I want to take off running until my legs burn.

You have Ewing’s Sarcoma.

The thought occurs to me that I might be floating above the room.

It is an aggressive type of cancer that rarely occurs in adults.

I hear the tips of a tree’s branches scratching the windowpane.

Good news is it responds well to chemotherapy.

I hear seconds being snipped off by the second-hand of the wall clock.

When I’m through with you, you are going to feel like you’ve been hit by a truck.

Two taxis are laying on their horns. Someone on the street is yelling.

It is likely that you will be infertile after treatment.

The floor rushes up at me and I am suddenly grounded.

No.

I can’t. I won’t. We want children. We’re getting married next month.

The doctor looks at me then pulls forward a Rolodex, takes out a card and leaves the room.

My soon to be husband’s hand is cold. I look at him and we both shake our heads.

The door opens.

Call this number tomorrow. You have one month to do IVF and then you must start treatment immediately.

Our wedding is six weeks away.

Read PART 1 here
Read PART 2 here

Shopping For Summer Clothes

We all know by now that I am a bit anxiety ridden, particularly at the mall. I shop approximately two times a year. Once for winter clothing. Once for fall clothing. The last time I ventured into a shopping situation I practically urinated on the floor of the Gap.

Fashion is great. I think. Maybe.

It’s just that I find the process of dressing a body that is genetically built to be in Eastern Europe picking potatoes a bit challenging.

Where is the catalog for my body type?

Today it was about 90 degrees in Portland. The heat, combined with a lovely gift card sent by the in-laws with the message: Keep being your own kind of beautiful! (hmm) landed me in the Gap.

I was awkwardly trying to pull a t-shirt from the middle of a meticulously folded stack of blue t-shirts when a denim clad boy approached me with a stun gun.

Hi! Can I help you find anything? 

OH goodness so sorry I just messed up your folding I’m not sure what I want so I’ll just browse, I muttered awkwardly while shaking off the desire to cling to his leg and weep while being dragged around the store.

I then scurried off to the closest wall, grabbed one pair of shorts in two sizes, a handful of shirts in three different sizes and a variety of colors, and a mumu kaftan maxi dress with weird stripes. Keeping a low profile, I entered a dressing room.

With the door closed securely behind me I stripped down to my underwear and started grooving to the Black Eyed Peas.

It was then that I was blinded by a deadly trifecta: bright lights, a full-length mirror, and a lumpy white figure doing The Sprinkler with sad breasts swinging side to side.

Jesus Mary and Josephina Marion Horowitz! 

There I was, face to face with what can only be described a disaster of epic proportions: The Pale Unexercised & Unexamined Winter Body.

I wanted to avert my eyes, but there was no avoiding what was before me.

I took it all in.

The feet. Heels callused, cracking. Red toenail polish chipped and flaking.

Two impressively long leg hairs above my ankle. Shaved legs, white with bumpy red patches. One greenish blue bruise on a shin.

Saddlebags.

Pouchy belly.

One shaven armpit. One hairy armpit.

Various scars.

The whole picture: barbaric.

What the? I’m supposed to put this mess in summer clothes? 

It was then that I decided that malls should come equipped with social workers to guide people through this process. Or at the very least someone should be handing out tranquilizers.

As I walked back to my car (with a pair of oddly fitting boyfriend denim shorts and two of t-shirts), I decided that though, yes, the old gal can use a tune-up, it’s not my body that’s the problem it’s the fucking clothes. I’m just living in the wrong era.

I could totally rock a peplos or a chiton.

Adventures With Cancer, Part 2

PART 2

I have cancer. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to the office today.

The receiver is heavy in my hand, lands with a dull thud in its metal cradle.

I consider staying in the phone booth. Consider opening the accordion door and sitting down on the hot sidewalk in front of Gray’s Papaya. Both seem viable choices to make at the moment. To just remain before.

Somehow I am in a car. My hand remembers the weight of the phone. I could still be in the muffled booth if I just close my eyes.

My not yet husband drives us uptown to an address that is embossed in black letters on a white business card balanced neatly on his knee.

We are making small talk. I speak in the voice of one who is carrying around a bomb protected by an eggshell.

The hallway is quiet, airless.

I am thinking about the group of people I saw the week before when I was running along Riverside Drive. How they were huddled together watching a man poised at the top of an apartment building’s ledge. The only sound was from one bird calling, calling. All those people dressed to go to work, in suits, pantyhose, heels. Just standing there, looking up, not saying anything.

With my index finger I draw and redraw the line on my palm that captures the meat of my thumb in a half-moon. My soon to be husband is speaking to a receptionist.

Soon I am sitting in a small white room, in a chair with a tiny table attached. It seems to be a school desk but has no place to store a pencil or small pink eraser.

What kind of cancer do I have?

The nurse has a thick rubber band around my arm.

Make a fist.

The jab of the needle is a relief.

I don’t know. The doctor isn’t here today.

She lines up vials of dark red blood each with a different colored stopper.

Come back on Monday. 

It is my soon to be husband’s birthday.

You can go.

It is six weeks before our wedding.

Read PART 3 here

Getting Spanked

I’m getting spanked. And, no, not in the way one might enjoy getting spanked if one didn’t have an ass that slaps back. I’m getting spanked by my two-year-old. Who, incidentally, is exhausting me to the point that the possibility of sex and spanking happening on any given night is nearly impossible. But I digress…

My first two kids are 14 months apart. When they were twos and threes I had my nose all up in the parenting books. I had mastered the 1-2-3 Give Them The Look And Presto They’ll Do What You Say technique. I don’t remember needing to give them time-outs.

Sadly I have been lulled by the gentle rhythms of the older kids’ latency years and am now find myself getting a smack down from the third child, Mr. T.

How, exactly, do you parent a two-year-old asshole?

He’s not really an asshole. Yes he is. No he’s not. Yes he is.

I OWN YOU

Last week I had a small operation. I am not to lift anything over 10 pounds for the next few weeks. I sit Mr. T down and explain that I have a “owie” that prevents me from doing “up-poo” for a while, but that he’s a big boy and can walk.

Note: This child doesn’t like his feet to touch the ground for too long. He likes to preserve energy so there is always be just enough to wreak havoc when necessary.

On our first post-surgical outing we go to the library after preschool. Mr. T is in a good mood. I tank him up with some cookies food. He gets out of the car all by himself and marches into the Rec Center that houses the library. As soon as we get inside he looks at me, smiles and takes off running past the library, down the hall, and all the way to the vending machines.

After pulling him off the machine luring him back down the hallway and into the library we settle in to read books. Another child and her mother show up and everything is peaceful until I say Okay, five more minutes and then it’s time to go home for lunch.

Note: The other child is well-behaved, listens to her mother, not attempting to climb the stacks or yelling LODEEDODEEDODEEDOOO at the top of her lungs. And her mother is well coiffed.

Alarmed that his library time is being cut short, Mr. T’s revs up. His eyes dilate. I am physically powerless. There will be no scoop the child and run.

I play puppets!

Grunt, grunt.

A foul smell wafts through the air.

The other mother looks up.

I shake my head and mouth It’s my kid.

Grunt, grunt.

LODEEDODEEDODEEDOOO!

GRUNT.

CHANGE MY DIAPAHHHHH!

CHANGE MY DIAPAHHHH! 

(Translation: I do not sit in my own feces. Remove this offensive garment immediately or I will do so myself.)

The other mother and child exit scene.

Sadly, the diaper bag is not on my person.

Hey, buddy, we need to go home to change your diaper. Let’s go! 

Mr.T throws himself on the floor of the library.

CHANGE MY DIAPAHHHHH!

CHANGE MY DIAPAHHHH!

He is corpse-like stiff and I am unable to move him or convince him to follow me. I am at his mercy and he knows it and I have no diapers, no wipes, no strategy.

I look up. No security cameras. I look around. No parents. No children.

With stealth like speed I lift his legs, remove diaper, shove in my bag, pull up his pants.

Boy returns to puppet area. I am aware that at any moment he is likely to urinate on the books.

Okay, guy, we have to go now! There’s yummy food at home and we’re all done at the library. Here we go…

Boy looks at me like a wild animal. Runs to other side of children’s area. I run. He runs. Back and forth. Back and forth.

I think to myself “Seriously? I gave up a career for this shit? I am an asshole. I am chasing a two-year old back and forth in a library. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?” 

In a moment of desperation, humiliation and with the full knowledge that I have lost all hope, I say Well, I guess I’m going to get ice cream all by myself then. See ya! 

That’s how I get him into the car. Without lifting. And with great shame.

So, how exactly do you parent a two-year-old?

THANK YOU GOD

Ah, Nature!

Let’s be honest. I’m not the kind of person who looks forward to days my kids have off of school. In fact I circle them in red on the calendar and spend a good amount of advance time in a panic. Like sands through the hourglass so were the days of her sanity slipping down the murky toilet…

To compound my anxiety are those parents. You know them. The ones who post pictures on Facebook of their glorious days making new papier-mache bird houses and baking flax-seed cookies? Yep. That’s so not me. I’m more of a come sit on my lap and I’ll read you stories for hours while waiting for a more responsible party to relieve me of my duties.

Well, today my usual routine wasn’t going to fly. The kids were raring to get out of the house and I could not longer contain them.

So, two peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, a bag of crackers and some grapes later we were headed for Portland’s Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden.

The sun was peeking out and the kids were loving being out in nature. We saw ducks, geese, nutria, red winged black birds, scrub jays and a nut hatch. And, of course, amazing rhododendrons of every color.

It really was the perfect day to visit chaos upon the senior bird watching crowd. I think they particularly enjoyed the dulcet tones of my daughter yelling, “LOOK AT THAT DUCK SEXING THE OTHER DUCKS!” Ah, nature. Thank you for your bounty.

Regarding Vandalism to The Little Tattoo Shoppe

It came to my attention this evening that damage was done to Matthew Mattison’s The Little Tattoo Shoppe. I want to make it clear that I do not condone or respect vandalism.

Code Brown!

After picking up my two-year-old from preschool this morning, we decided to go to Target. (Sadly, when I say, “We’re going to Target now,” he yips with joy and chants, “YAY TARGET!”) I needed to pick up some sippy cups, because no, Teacher Lady, we don’t do the big boy cups a.k.a. Flying Glass Projectile Objects. 

Target was uneventful. I went in needing sippy cups, and left with new tub toys (Rubber Ducky recently met its maker because it smelled like crotch rot), Teensy Fruits (don’t ask), two Matchbox cars, and several boxes of microwavable bacon. After narrowly dodging a collision with a questionably abled Target branded motorized wheelchair riding dude, we were on our way home.

As we zoomed along to the sound of Theo singing I’m wollin’ in the deeeeeee-EEEYUP and the wha-whump, wha-whump of a plastic truck careening down the length of the mini-van and back again, I asked Theo if he had pooped in preschool that morning.

Yup! Nope! Poop! Yes! Nope! Poop! I want a baffffffff!

Inconclusive.

Back home we put everything away and prepped for bath time.

Hands over head, shirt off.

Round, round belly.

Wiggle, wiggle, jiggle.

Diaper and pants off.

Two sweaty socks.

A shoe filled with sand.

It had definitely been a sandbox morning.

We went upstairs and filled the tub with water and bubbles.

New bath toys were bobbing, Theo was happily filling cups with water and pouring the water back over the faucet.

So, Theo, you know that if you need to make a poop, you need to tell Mama that it’s coming and we’ll hop on over to the toilet, okay?

Yep, yep! Hop over to toilet if poop comes. Okay!

A few minutes passed and I reminded him again. 

He played with a penguin cup, a fish cup and a starfish toy. Poured bubbles from penguin cup to fish cup. Dove fish cup through tall peaks of bubbles. Made bubble mustaches. 

Mama, where starfish? Where starfish? STARFISH!!!

I plunged my hand into the warm water and groped around the various cups that were hidden under the thick foam. 

No, that’s not the starfish. Not that either.

We’ll find it, don’t worry! I crooned.

Hey, what’s this I feel?

Oh.

Wait.

Did I leave a sponge in here?

Oh.

No, no, no.

Holy man sized shit.

This is not a sponge. 

CODE BROWN!

GET OUT OF THE TUB! 

Theo was dripping and shivery. Trying not to gag I flipped the drain and turned to get him dressed. After a few minutes I looked back at the tub, it was not draining. I approached but couldn’t see the drain so I splashed around the bubbles and cleared a spot.

There, staring right up at me, was a gigantic brown turd standing end to end in the drain. Two inches of poop sticking straight up. (How did a child his size produce this fecal monstrosity?)

I took the kitty litter scoop and pulled out what I could and flushed it. But the water was still not draining. There was still a poop plug. 

Desperate, I looked around my daughter’s bedroom. I needed a pencil, but I couldn’t find one and didn’t want to leave Theo alone upstairs.

But then, in the middle of a mosh pit of stuffed animals I spied a long skinny plastic leg with a red high-heel hooker boot attached. 

YES! 

I popped off the foot of the Bratz Doll and set to work in the bathroom. Her footless leg was the perfect size to ground that poop down and through the drain. Soon the water had cleared and I could clean the tub without fear of excessive fecal hazard. 

After a hearty thank you for her creative genius, Miss Sasha Sunshine Shalom Barbara Bratz Doll found a new plastic condo in the side yard and all was well in the bathtub once more.   

Amen.

  

Adventures with Cancer Part 1

PART 1

It was like a grain of sand, or a sliver just under the skin, maybe something magical I thought I was feeling. It was elusive at first, rolling away from the pressure of a fingertip. Over weeks, possibly months it grew. Then it seemed as if something was truly there, a tiny bump. An ingrown hair? A lymph node? Eh, it’s nothing.

It became a little secret that I put away for later, later. But then in bed at night I asked my boyfriend, Can you feel this? Is this something? With the touch of his finger,  what I’d believed was in my imagination was confirmed with a sleepy Umm hmm.

The doctor’s room was cold, I had on a tiny gown tied awkwardly around my side. As I readjusted myself I noticed my legs were sticking to the paper spread across the examination table. Every time I shifted the paper stuck to my legs. There was a two-year old Sports Illustrated in the magazine rack and a few pamphlets about STDs.

It’s a cyst, the doctor declared, washing his hands with his back to me. So I don’t have to do anything about it? I confirmed. No, it’ll probably just go away in time, nothing to worry about, he said, leaning his back against the sink with his arms crossed against his belly.

So my cyst and I went on our way, on the subway back to my office, back to joking around with coworkers, back on the subway uptown to the tiny apartment I shared with my boyfriend turned fiance.

Every night as I read before bed I’d unconsciously find my hand covering the spot that seemed to me to be getting bigger. It’s getting bigger, isn’t it? I asked my fiance. I think so, yeah, he said, maybe you should get it checked again?

This time I reminded my doctor that my mom had breast cancer. Breast cancer that had returned. You know my grandmother and my mother had breast cancer, right? Again he assured me that it was a cyst. It would just leave an ugly scar if he took it out. Nothing to worry about.

My fiance and I went to my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah in Minnesota. The cyst was uncomfortable. Rubbing against my dress, interfering with my bra. I pulled one of my cousins, an E.R. doctor, to a private spot. Can you look at this? I asked. Looks like a benign fatty tumor, he said, but you should have it taken out.

The next week I went back to my doctor. Look, I said, I’m getting married in a couple of months and this thing is getting big. When I’m wearing my wedding gown and lift my arm you can see the lump. Can you please take it out? The doctor said it was too big to take out in his office. He referred me to a dermatologist. That doctor would take it out. No problem.

Can I see it? I asked the dermatologist after he and the resident had removed the lump in his office. It was in a small vial floating innocently enough: white, solid. Not what I imagined a cyst to look like. I made small talk with the doctor, joked around as I always do. He didn’t say much. That night I was in pain. I called the on-call doctor and said that Advil wasn’t cutting it. You really shouldn’t be in this much pain she said.

A week later I hadn’t heard from the dermatologist’s office. Wedding plans overwhelming me. Flowers, music, the Rabbi and Cantor, where were out-of-town guests staying? I called the dermatologist’s office. We had to send it to a different lab for more testing, the doctor said, I’ll call you.

A week later a phone call at work. The doctor would like to see you in his office as soon as possible. My stomach dropped. I tried to put it out of my mind. But something wasn’t right. My fiance met me at the doctor’s office.

We were escorted to the back of the office, to a dark paneled room with medical encyclopedias and family photos. My fiance and I held hands, my knee bounced up and down, up and down. The small staccato of my knee was the only sound.

Soon the doctor came in, sat down behind his desk, and said I got the pathology back and unfortunately what we took out was malignant. It is cancer.

I have cancer? I looked at my fiance, soon to be my husband, and said FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK. 

Read PART 2 here