The Summer Day

Thursday, July 24

It’s raining. Not men, not cats and dogs, just those fat, tinny, acid drops of wet that fall endlessly and hopelessly to go splat and stream down the windows and soak and spongify the green grass and splatter mud all over the vegetables. The raspberries are drenched, the driveway has run off into the lawn, and the constant downpours have cast a bleak shadow over everyone’s moods. Yesterday, when we were still tired and spent from our weekend festivities and our Mon-Tues Boston trip, we were glad for the constant drizzle and cooler temperatures, for the excuse to stay at home, inside, where we could slowly unravel ourselves from the sticky busy-ness that has defined our last week, and recapture some energy from sucking in the glow of the Pirates of the Caribbean illuminating the TV screen. But today, when we’ve slept off our over-stimulation from the Boston and Festival crowds, rested our ear drums, and unpacked our bags, we’re ready to head out again, and yet, the rain keeps us in, and I wonder where the Cat in the Hat has gone to with Thing One and Thing Two—it’s been that kind of a day.

We've had a string of long, tiring, packed days lately. Over the weekend, the wonderful Green River Festival, where we baked and sweat in the hot sticky sun with the multitudes—“Just like a New Jersey beach,” Jim said, and promptly fell asleep—stuffed our bellies with Bueno Y Sano burritos, whole-belly fried clams, and Bart’s ice cream, ran into countless friends and neighbors and, the best surprise of all, my brother Will and his girlfriend Ariel, and kicked back to some great music—Mavis Staples, Jimmie Vaughn, Forro in the Dark, Los Straitjackets, and Lucinda Williams—caught me watching the unfettered, spontaneous expressions of joy around me, in the kids zooming about, in the all-out performances on stage, in the unabashed bits of dancing here and there, and I wondered: where was mine? Where had my ability to dive deeply into the subterraneous layers of delight and cough up some groove of my own gone to? I felt so stilted, so stunted, so completely inside of my stupid head, and all I wished was that I could cut loose, dance a little without worrying about how embarrassed Luke would be (and he would be, perhaps to the point of disowning me), and grab a little something for myself. I felt positively shy again, something I hadn’t felt in a long while, not since that overly self-conscious feeling made me hide behind my father’s legs as a child and later, as an adolescent, try to blend in during junior high school dances. It wasn’t until I discovered the rush of a good (or bad, depending on who you talk to) drink, and the sneaky way it had of pushing me into my depths and releasing me in my wilds, that I was able to find my courage, however artificial and contrived it may have been, to reveal a little more me.

Since I can no longer rely on having a few gin and tonics to loosen me up and accompany me to the dance floor, I have to dig deep, deeper than I used to. (And if it’s dark out, and no one can really see me, that helps too.) I made a little promise to myself: that next year, I’d hit the dance tent, and even if I hide in the back shadows, I’m going to dance. I am hoping that my spectator days are over. But I cannot lie, watching those around me was fun. There was the shirtless guy with long hair waving his arms all about, keeping rhythm with some kind of seismic beat in his head. There was the woman who jumped in front of Luke over and over again, and shook her hips, which were rather large, totally blocking his view of the stage. And there were the stoned 50-somethings next to us, who every now and then would rise to their feet in a kind of a pothead salute, upper body barely skimming a beat, eyes blazing red. There’s a certain sport in people-watching, particularly when there are smatterings of suddenly-inspired white people dancing (rather badly). I figured that some of them must have disregarded the no alcohol (not to mention the no drugs) rule and left their teenagers behind as well.

But it spiraled me into a new thinking: that joy lives inside, to be unleashed at any given time if the moment presents itself, and that we can spend our lives looking outside ourselves for that which rages within. We all have different ways of feeding our spirit, but feed it we must. And I, with all the vagaries of the past six months, have all but shut down the feeding tube. But this withering-on-the-vine bit does not work for me. I realize that I have not danced enough, I have not belted out those songs that have carried me through the darkest days of my misspent youth, I have not reached in and let myself go, somehow too afraid to bother or embarrass somebody, be rebuffed, shushed, or silenced. How silly of me. It was there all along. I just need to let it go, and it’ll come back to me.

Boston, too, offers great opportunities for people-watching, and for two days after the Festival we walked about the city, making our way through the throngs of tourists at Quincy Market and noshing on chicken biryani and gelato, checking out the sharks and penguins at the New England Aquarium, and playing with the art of Anish Kapoor at the stunning new Institute of Contemporary Art. Those were the highlights.

Back at our hotel, the Boston Westin Waterfront (a priceline name-your-price score!), the National Association of Letter Carriers spilled into every possible space, buzzing here and there in their personalized vests and, what else!, walking shorts. The elevators were filled with transistor-radio blaring, beer-can toting, leather-vest wearing partiers. There was a lot of red, white and blue, a lot of Patriotic-speak floating about (I heard “This makes me proud to be an American” more than once), and a canister full of McCain pins at the hotel store. With just one Obama pin left, we wondered: had all the other Obamas been snatched up? Jim thought he saw a sign welcoming Hillary Clinton to the convention, and overheard someone saying “Thanks for bringing Hillary.” Maybe that explains it.

My first thought when I saw them was that I hoped none of them would go postal on us. Do you think they get that a lot? A guy at the hotel restaurant told us that he hoped they made them check their weapons at the door. Har-har.

The other group sharing our space at the Westin? Why, some organization of medical oncologists, of course. How fitting.

I saw my oncologist at MGH that afternoon, the whole reason for our visit to Boston. I hadn’t seen her since my first meeting with her way back in April, a visit that was filled with the anticipation of waiting to hear what my treatment—chemo or no chemo--would be. Again, as they had at Dr. Pitts' Faulkner office last week, shadows of fear greeted me as I arrived at the Yawkey building and scanned the names by the elevator, running through all the cancer centers until I find mine: the Breast Center.

There were reminders everywhere that this visit was about cancer, my cancer. My visits with Dr. Pitts this spring have been about the reconstruction process, the cosmetic, cosmic recreation of my left breast, a step by step sculptural, surgical escapade that has not, directly, been about cancer. The literature in Dr. Pitts’ Wellesley waiting room, which she shares with a plastic surgeon who lifts baggy eyes and fixes bumps on noses and the like, is all about procedures to improve upon your fading good looks, and the books that line the walls of the examination rooms are filled with before and after photographs, some stunning, some so subtle I couldn't tell what had been done (yes, while waiting for Dr. Pitts, I perused one of the books and decided that this was not a world I would want to spend much time in). But at the Yawkey Breast Center, where the carousels are lined with breast cancer literature, and the patients filling the seats stretch across the full spectrum of cancer treatments, it’s all about the cancer—about making sure there’s nothing new going on, my cells are behaving themselves, the Tamoxifen is doing its job without compromising my good health, and that I understand just how lucky I am to have dodged the chemo bullet.

After walking from Faneuil Hall, where we sat through a 30-minute ranger presentation and learned just how pathetically (the ranger's word, not mine) ignorant most people are when it comes to US History, I arrived early at MGH--nearly twenty minutes before I was instructed. The nurse took me in to get my blood work out of the way, and I realized that I had a full hour before my appointment with Dr. Ryan was slated to begin. Another nurse took me into an examination room to take my vitals--I had to remind her not to take my blood pressure on the left arm--and I returned to the waiting room to try to find a magazine and read about something other than Talking to your Teen about Cancer or Chemotherapy and You. After about an hour of sitting and sweeping through the pages of a glossy Travel mag, I was aware of how tired I suddenly felt--all the festivities of the weekend, the late nights, the city stimulation, and the added drain of having just been dealt with the unexpected (though it should be expected by now, given its uncanny ability to show up, like clockwork, around significant doctor's appointments and surgeries) pleasure (not) of getting my period a week late, all piggybacking together to squash me deep into my chair. A woman came out to tell me that Dr. Ryan was running late. Ah, of course. Ask me to arrive an hour early for bloodwork that takes three minutes and then have me wait for another two hours.

But this is where I was, waiting my turn with all the other patients, some more obviously cancer than others, with their shorn hair, tremulous brand of moxie and spunk, and chemo-drip chills, and there was nothing I could do about it.

By the time Dr. Ryan arrived in the examination room, I had put on my johnny and read everything on the wall in sight. I had even begun to work my way through a gossip magazine, that made me trashy and ashamed (just kidding, there were some great photos of stars in their bikinis that made me feel much better about my post-surgical body). Dr. Ryan looked about as tired as I felt, as she gave me a very thorough breast exam (everything seemed fine), asked me how I had been feeling on the Tamoxifen (hot! way too hot!), and offered a prescription to counteract the hot flashes that have been making me feel as if I'm standing in front of my seventh grade class giving a presentation and my face is burning red hot and I feel like I'm about to pass out (more meds? no thanks, I told her, I'll suck it up).

As we talked, rather hurriedly, she reminded me that I'm one of the lucky ones, that there's not much to worry about, given that I'm "perfectly healthy" (uh-huh, I thought, except for the fact that just recently, there were some renegade cancer cells doing their wacky sideshow of strange cell-splitting gymnastics in the left breast area). It's obvious that she sees so many women who are in such worse shape than I am, women nearly decimated by their cancer, or by the chemotherapy, or by other health issues, that by contrast I am perfectly healthy, lucky, golden. And I suppose I should feel lucky, and most days I do, but that afternoon I was feeling so boggy and low that I did not feel lucky at all, just exhausted, and sick of all the cancer talk, the endless stream of doctor's visits, feeling disabled and weak and not myself, and wanting, desperately wanting to be out of there and far away from all things cancer, to be done with it, to be assured that the cancer will not come back, ever, that I don't have to worry about it day in and day out, that I will enjoy not twenty, or even thirty years out, but forty, fifty. Can anyone tell me that? It's really all I wanted and want to hear.

I was somewhat caught off guard by this sudden stranglehold of self-pitying melancholy, but found the underpinning of fervent calm--my attempt at keeping it all together for the camera--to reopen the airways and breathe again, and make my way back to the hotel.

I suppose I am quickly learning that I don't really want to think about the damn cancer much at all--except in the way that it is pushing me towards living and breathing in a new expanded present, an enhanced awareness of what really matters to me, of what's happening now, a shifting but central place of calm, where I can appreciate the little specks of bling and joy throughout my day, and not worry so much about the outcome of everything--relationships, projects, medical tests, lifetimes. The joy will come, I tell myself, little by little. And there is reason to celebrate. My new girl is working out quite well. She feels a bit bionic--when I contract my pec muscle on the left side, she tightens into a ball and squeezes up towards my chest. And there are summer days still to enjoy, and Fall to look forward to. Tell me, what else should I do?


The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everthing die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver