Mom

This is my Mom, Gwen.  I took several pictures of her, including this one, while I was home visiting her back in the spring.  Almost a year ago she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Before pancreatic cancer made its way into the celebrity news, my Dad died of it – that was 2005.  The fear and despair Mom and I both felt when she was diagnosed with the same disease were like uninvited guests who show up while you’re still in your pajamas.  Not being one to wallow in self pity though, Mom quickly commented that she “had too much to do” to be sick.

Following a successful Whipple procedure to remove the cancer from Mom’s pancreas, a PET scan revealed a new tumor on her liver.  This was disappointing news as no such tumor had been present just a dozen weeks before.  To date she has been through two separate rounds of chemotherapy that have had minimal effect – perhaps just enough to keep the cancer from spreading beyond her liver; although, it continues to grow there.

Mom has continued to be very active with her family, friends and in her church.  And when asked after the most recent scan whether she wanted to continue treatment, her answer was a definitive, “Yes!”  We hope to learn later this week what the next step in treatment will be.  She’s made it clear she’s not interested in any trials that would take her away from home.  I fully support this position.  From what I’ve observed, Mom is happier at home living her life rather than living her cancer.

I won’t lie and try to tell you that my heart isn’t breaking.  That it doesn’t break just a little more with every strong yet graceful act of bravery I see her make.  Things like making plans to take our yearly trip together again next June.  I know that making plans keeps her going, the simple assumption that she, not the cancer, will decide what she gets to do.  I know from experience that it’s difficult to stand up for yourself with physicians, and I’ve seen her do it over and over – asking questions and making her own choices, advocating for what feels right for her.  It makes me proud to see her navigate all that she has to deal with and to see her continue to trust her own judgement.

Six years ago my Dad taught me how to die.  And now my Mom is teaching me how to live.  I’m grateful for the time we have together.  I’m grateful that after forty years she still is my Mom and still has things to teach me about life.  I’m grateful that I am so loved.

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Are We Grown-ups?

“Are we grown-ups?”  This question was raised at dinner recently in response to my mostly snarky comment about preferring grown-ups.  The discussion around the table had been about relationships and the pettiness that can go on when one or both partners are, well, if not grown-ups, shall we say, immature?  My response was, “Well, I think we’re what passes for grown-up anyway.”

But it’s a fair question and it strikes a chord because it seems to me to go hand-in-hand with that feeling I’ve long harbored about being a mom—that I’ve somehow snuck in past the “mom police” and am operating without a license.  I wonder if we ever really feel that we’ve grown up.  Society’s markers for adulthood are somewhat arbitrary, and each of us is more or less ready for the responsibilities associated with adulthood as we get there depending on all kinds of factors.  Certainly, I carry the mundane trappings of being a grown-up:  age, a job, my own place, and more complexly a marriage, a child.  These are only external measures of adulthood though.

What about how I feel on the inside?  I remember that when I was a little girl, I expected that someday a switch of sorts would flip and then I’d be a grown-up.  Guess what?  There was no switch.  And there is still a part of me that sometimes asks, “When will I feel like a grown-up?”  And for goodness sake if being a parent and the death one of my own parents doesn’t make me feel like a grown-up, I’m not sure anything will!

For my part, I’m content with the process, with continually discovering who I am.  With that sense that I’ll always be growing up, that the timer will never go off on the oven until my heart stops beating, and even then, it’s just a different process – sprinkle me in the yard and let me help the flowers grow-up.  I love this process of constantly growing.   And in some ways I’m finding that as I get older, I’m embracing more of my younger self, rediscovering that sense of wonder with the world, that old fearlessness before I learned to worry so much.  Grateful to be a part of this mystery, this life, this bliss.

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Unravelling Thursday – Looking Back

My Younger Self...circa 1988

This week in Unravelling class we’re looking at memories…particularly photographic memories.  This photo has long been one of my favorites ever taken of me.  My high school friend and one of the photographers for the year book, Christy Smith, took this photo.  We were actually doing a photo shoot for something else of other people, but she saw this shot and took it.  Happy accident.  This scan is from a few years ago, I have since misplaced the original print…I’d like to find it again as I think those are finger print smudges or something on there!

I was up half the night last night and haven’t fared well today as a result.  Just further proof that this was taken more than twenty years ago…makes me cringe.  I don’t really feel so different from this girl though, wiser certainly I hope, but I have never really come to grips with the fact that I’m a grown up.  Sometimes I’m surprised to find myself with a family and car and job.  And so it goes.  Goodnight folks.  I’m hoping to actually sleep!

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Favorite Things – Favorite Color

Do you remember Garanimals brand clothes?  The original concept, as I understood it as a child, was that the different items of clothing were coded with animals that kids could match up so that their outfits would also match.  So, for example, match a zebra pair of shorts with a zebra top and you’re sure you’re going to match.  I thought this was awesome and begged for Garanimals clothing…you have to remember that I was five at the time.  My parents either thought they were a little pricey or more likely a little too conformist for their leftist leanings and I only ever had one Garanimals outfit.  It was in my favorite color—yellow!  Bright sunshine yellow shorts with a yellow and white striped t-shirt to match.  I loved them!

Yellow was my favorite color at the time.  I even had a yellow bedroom with curtains and a bedspread covered with sunflowers.  But my favorite color betrayed me that summer.  As I often did, I fell sick while visiting my grandparents and had to go to the doctor.  I was prescribed antibiotics for whatever happened to be ailing me, and I know now that what I was given was probably erythromycin which is one of the nastiest antibiotics out there.  Erythromycin is particularly nasty in the suspension form which is of course what I was given as a child.  I can still remember its taste and texture.  I can also remember its particular shade of yellow.  One night I was lying in bed at my grandmother’s house after taking a dose of the nasty stuff and my mom was reading to me.  That medicine induced the most beautiful rainbow of projectile vomit imaginable.  It even missed the end of the bed making a spectacular splat on the wood floor!  Mom asked me why I didn’t tell her I was going to throw-up.  “I didn’t know,” was my plaintive response.  And forever after that experience with the nasty medicine I had to take for days and days, I dropped yellow as my favorite color; we were through.

As a child, I never really recovered from losing my favorite color.  I tried out my best friend’s color for awhile—purple.  But it didn’t really suit me.  I settled on blue for a bit, but it was an ever changing preference once yellow and I were on the outs.  Even now if you ask me what my favorite color is, I don’t have a ready answer; it just depends on my mood—I might say blue or green or orange but never yellow.  These days yellow and I have come to an understanding.  You’ll never see me wearing yellow, and I don’t go out of my way to pick yellow things like linens or dishes.  But I do love yellow rooms—they make me happy.    Yellow has regained its sunny disposition in my mind.

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