Category Archives: August 2013

41

For months, I’ve been saying how much I hate 2013. It’s just been one thing after another, and as much as I don’t wish my life away as a general rule, I’ve been waiting for 2014.

Then it hit me: the crap didn’t start in January. It started about when I turned 40. When I was about to turn 40, everyone was asking me how I was going to celebrate this big milestone. To which I’d answer, “I’m studying for comps.” In my program, after we defend our Master’s, we have to take these comprehensive exams so we can be continued on to pursue our doctorates. They last two eight-hour days, and can be on basically anything we’ve learned in grad school. They suck the life out of you. I took mine exactly one week after I turned 40. Thing is, you don’t just bounce back from taking comps. It takes a good while. I used to say I wasn’t the same the whole rest of that semester, didn’t have the energy to focus on anything else. In retrospect, though, since my cancer was advanced by the time I was diagnosed, it’s possible my low energy was due to the cancer…. sorry to anyone who hadn’t yet taken them, who I might’ve scared. Oops.

After taking comps, a favorite great aunt died, my brother was told he was dying, he died, I got diagnosed, the cancer was worse than originally thought, I had surgery and chemo. Like I said. One thing after another. I’ve been stressed, overwhelmed, heartsick, physically sick, scared, grieving, numb, angry, you name it. So, being 40 started with comps and ended with chemo. Yuck.

And yet. It’s not quite fair to describe my year that way. It’s not the whole truth. Because through each and every one of those things, I’ve been loved. When my cohort took comps, our classmates brought a ton of wonderful food and encouragement to see us through. Seriously, it included a souffle. When we found out about my brother, I was at my parent’s house with a friend who had never met my family before. She sat with us in our grief, and both said and didn’t say all the right things, making us feel safe and loved, even though she had just had a day-long interview for internship. When my brother died, the celebration of his life was not only well-attended, but stories were shared about him that still make me tear up. And as usual, my cousins surrounded us with all the love we could take. When I was diagnosed, my classmates gave me love, even the self-professed non-huggers. The professors cried with me. Really, more than one. Both classmates and professors have brought me food while I’ve been sick from chemo. How many grad students can say they’ve been supported by the people in their program so lovingly? My family, both immediate and extended, has been steadfast in their show of support, doing everything they can think of and anything that was (is) asked of them. I’ve gotten gifts in the mail from friends I haven’t seen in years, hats made for me to protect my bald head, and more loving messages than I can even count. And 40 didn’t actually end with chemo, if I’m going to be precise. It ended with a wonderful visit from my sister and brother-in-law to celebrate my birthday. What could be better than that? Really, considering the circumstances, I couldn’t ask for more. So while it’s true that I’ve felt stress, illness, grief, fear, all those things, it’s also true that I’ve also felt all this love. This love that pervades every single day, and that I would not have experienced or really even known about had it not been for all of the pain.

I was more than happy to say goodbye to 40 this last weekend, and have decided that 41 will be markedly different. But I am also feeling fortunate to have had this last year. It was hard as Hell, sure. AND there was also so much sweetness. But more importantly, I think it taught me something more important than tallying up the good vs. the bad. Something like, it was mine. I got to feel all of those things. I got to experience them. I got to learn how to face my pain. It wasn’t a year to drift through mindlessly, but one that wakes a person up. It made me grateful for all of my experiences, and recognize that my life is richer for having had each and every one of them.

Bring it on, 41.

best-laid plans

It seems as if I’m destined to be presented with the same lesson over and over again until it finally sinks in. Thing is, I keep thinking that it has sunk in, and then, time and time again, am reminded that I have not, in fact, learned the lesson at all.

The lesson has to do with making plans. And control. Every time I think I have a portion of my life planned out, or under control, Life comes along and shows me it has other plans. And every time I meet the destruction of my careful plans with feelings of injustice, as if nothing should change once I decide on a course. Even though it virtually always does.

The first time I remember talking about having learned this lesson (although I clearly hadn’t) was at my grad school interview. More than one person asked me what I saw myself doing in five years. Having had my life take some big changes prior to the interview, I gave what I thought was a wise but truthful answer. I said that five years ago, I had no idea I would even go back to finish my Bachelor’s degree, much less apply to a doctoral program. Moreover, five years prior I didn’t even know what school psychology was. So rather than say with any confidence what I’d be doing in five years, I was open to wherever life took me. Then I think I completely contradicted myself and said something else about what I wanted to do with my school psychology degree. Of course, the contradiction is what betrayed the idea that I had learned my lesson. It also showed my complete ignorance at how long school would take me, but that’s a whole other story.

So last week, my oncologist told me I should start thinking about scheduling my double mastectomy. I glibly told her that I had plenty of time, because I had planned to go to school during Fall Semester, and have the surgery during Winter Break. I had planned it, see? It fit perfectly into my little timeline that nicely worked my treatment around my school, so that nothing was disrupted. I had already extended my schooling for a year, and I wasn’t about to extend it any further. Well. My doctor’s eyes got wide, and I’m pretty sure I detected some panic in her already normally-anxious voice. She might have even twitched. She informed me that my plan wasn’t optimal care for an aggressive cancer such as mine. She said it was ultimately up to me, but letting that cancer sit, untreated, for an extra month, was risky. It was one of those reminders that I don’t go to see her as some sort of alternative summer routine, but rather because I actually have cancer. Oh yeah.

So, my plans changed. I won’t attend school this semester. This is a hard change for me. Another reminder that things are not in my control. But maybe the lesson is that, to an extent, control is an illusion. We can optimize our opportunities to the best of our abilities to have the life we want by making our plans, sure. But maybe the danger isn’t in making the plans so much as it is in the clinging to the plans. When we (or I, anyway) become so attached to the planned timelines we have created in our heads (how many times have I charted out when I would take which class, when I would write my dissertation, when I would apply for internship, when I would be DONE), we feel almost heartbroken, betrayed, angry, hurt, when those timelines have to change. In all reality, I do know that in five years, it will make no difference to me when I took this class vs. that, or in which semester I proposed my dissertation. I will, however, remember that when given a choice, I always prioritized optimal care over pushing through with a given plan I had become so attached to.

So, it looks like the school supplies I bought for this semester will have to wait. Maybe until next? I’m trying to be flexible with that. Until then, it looks like I have some extra time on my hands. Maybe to digest the impermanence of everything. And, oh yeah, surgery on November 11th. Unless that changes.

Parenting daughters is a tricky business

I’ve been feeling progressively better lately. So much so that I feel like I’m waking up from a deep freeze, or a bad dream. Sometimes, I’ll forget that there are certain foods that I still can’t eat without getting horrible heartburn, but it’s nothing like it was with the previous chemo regimen. So far, I’m tolerating this current one much better. I am starting to get tingling in my feet and legs, some bone pain, and fatigue, but nothing horrible. This has me wanting to distance myself drastically from the last 10 weeks. Even if it’s just for a week or two, should new symptoms start to accumulate and put me back in bed. Because of that, I’m refusing to write about my cancer this week. It has shrunk the parameters of my world over the last four months, and as I reengage with things and people who are really important to me, I want to not think about the cancer for a bit. I even treated chemo today as a chance to sit back and listen to an audio book by David Sedaris guilt-free, while nurses fussed around me, and I pretended they were fussing about anything other than cancer.

Instead, I want to write about my favorite topic: My daughter. Yesterday was the 9-year anniversary of the day we adopted her. She is starting her last year of elementary school in a few weeks, and has firmly planted herself into tween-hood. All of this makes me reflect on her, parenting her, parenting girls, parenting tween girls. It’s a tricky business. Perhaps it’s a tricky business to parent boys as well; I don’t know, and probably never will. But as Miko grows older, I recognize in a way I only grasped intellectually before, that to successfully parent a girl in a society that undervalues her talents and intellect and overvalues her looks, is a scary and frustrating endeavor. Maybe especially for a mom who tends toward the anxious. It’s not frustrating because of Miko, mind you. Miko is this fantastic child who is wholly and uniquely, well, Miko. She’s got this way about her that shows she knows what she’s doing, even when she doesn’t. When she was 10 months old, we took our first plane trip with her. My sister said that if the plane crashed, her dad and I would probably perish on contact, while Miko would somehow survive and toddle her way back to Seattle to find family. There was something about my sister’s scenario, however hyperbolic it may have been, that rang true. No, parenting her is difficult because of all the messages she (and I) receive multiple times daily, messages for which I feel this need to maintain constant vigilance. Also, because she is adopted, meaning she was entrusted to me to raise the best way I know how. And I take that responsibility seriously. I want her to be strong and independent, but not aloof or lonely. Considerate of others, but not self-deferential. Ambitious, but not ruthless. Well-rounded. Confident. Happy. Self-aware. Secure. Capable. You know, all the things.

And largely, she is. Like I said, I have this fantastic child. But she’s at this age, this scary (but exciting and fun) transitional age, in which the opinions of and interactions with others outside of her dad and I are becoming more and more important. Maybe especially because she’s a girl, and so is socialized (and perhaps hardwired, but I don’t feel like getting into that debate here) to value the interpersonal more. So she notices when people comment first (and sometimes only) on her appearance. She hears that this is important. And the thing is, she is a particularly beautiful child. She also has this look about her that she is older, or more worldly than she really is. In truth, her favorite kind of day would consist of playing dress-up with her best friends, pretending like she’s part of the Arthurian Legend. Or doing an art project. Or cooking. Or playing mad-libs over the phone with her cousin. She still thinks boys are “gross” and “dumb,” unless they are little boys who let her boss them around. Then she thinks they are cute, endearing. She’s not particularly worldly. She’s firmly 10.

But she’s perceptive, and she notices that people find her looks to be important. This is a hard one to navigate for me. I went through a wildly awkward stage that lasted for years, and I believe I’m better for it. When she tries to elicit confirmation about her looks from me, it feels like such a complicated answer (ok, I’ll admit here that this is in part because I am, by nature, neurotic, and have this insatiable need to make everything more complicated that it really needs to be). I will tell her that yes, of course she is beautiful, but that that is the least of her many wonderful qualities. To which she usually rolls her eyes, establishing that she thinks I am so Mom. Sometimes I will tell her to never let someone try and make her looks the most important thing about her, never let them make her smaller than she really is. To which she’ll answer something like, “Mom. I’m Miko. Nobody can make me smaller.” And then I smile, and relax with it a little. A little. For a little bit.

But then we will meet someone new, and more often than not, the first thing he or she says to my daughter is something about her appearance: what she’s wearing, her face, etc. And I just want to jump in front of her and yell, “No! Ask her what she’s reading. Or better yet, what she’s writing, or creating. Because she is, every day. Ask her about her favorite hobbies, what makes her happy. Elicit her opinion on some issue going on in the world, even if you don’t think she knows anything about it. Because even if she doesn’t, you’re telling her that her opinion matters, and that it’s important to care about issues bigger than oneself. Don’t reinforce the idea that her world should rotate on how she looks to others!”

But that’s too neurotic even for me. So I don’t. Instead, I hold it in, and watch as she navigates these interactions herself, often interjecting some of these subjects on her own, without my interference. And I relax, realizing that I can worry all I want, but Miko came to me fantastic, and is going to be fantastic no matter what I do.

Still. Parenting daughters is a tricky business.