Must. Be. Meaningful.

I’ve started several blog posts that I haven’t finished. Percocet took over and I couldn’t think. And everything I write seems ridiculous. Trite. Meaningless.

I don’t have anything to add to the cancer narrative. I can’t add any original observations.

I’ve started reading two breast cancer memoirs. I finished the first chapter of one of them and now I can’t decide if I want to continue reading it. Her story is compelling and she’s honest, and I’m sure it is a worthwhile read (several people highly recommended the book), but I really can’t relate to the beginning of her story.

She went to a strip club when she found out she had breast cancer.

While many women have written about their experience, certain things about the disease are very personal. And how you feel about your body is an issue with this disease. How society feels about your body is part of this disease.

All of this makes certain aspects of the disease hard to talk about. Near impossible for me. Im happy to tell you about drains and medications and tissue expanders and chemo. That’s the easy stuff.

I keep dreaming about strange rooms, houses, apartments, filled with stuff, so much stuff that I keep realizing there is more stuff in them than I thought and someone or people come in and take the stuff away. In the dream, I can’t decide what to do, but I’m surprised at all the stuff and surprised that people want to take it away from me, and half the time I’m not dressed properly so I can’t do anything because I’m trying to find my clothes.

It’s something like that.

Imagination Fail

oncologist bunny

Eight days until surgery.

I’ve got my post-op shirts and even two small post-op pillows. One pillow is recommended for the drive home from the hospital. It will go between the seatbelt strap and me. I’ve seen post-op pictures of others to give me an idea what to expect. I’m getting my house in order, people are arranging to cook and to pick my son up for skate practice, and fundraisers have been set up.

And still I can’t quite believe this is happening.

Like when you’re a kid and you know that one day you’re going to be a grownup, but you can’t really believe it. Or your childless and decide to have a kid, having no clue as to what you’re in for. Or you get a publisher for your first book, but the book isn’t out yet and you can’t hold the book in your hands.

My imagination fails me so often. At least, it is easy to imagine these things happening to someone else, like a character in a book.

What events in your life did you find impossible to fully imagine until you got there?

More Bloody Days and Other Craziness

trying to relax this way

Here is what I know today.

First, I need wound care. This surgical incision–still bleeding after two weeks–isn’t healing properly. I’m looking forward to getting that out of the way.

After this wound clears up, my future holds a few more medical adventures.

I’ll be tested for Marfan Syndrome. I’ve been suspected before of having this, but now I’ll be properly tested. My mother died at 45 of an aortic aneurysm, and I’m 44. So. Seems I should have my heart checked. If I do test positive, my son will have to be tested as well. That’s the most worrisome thing of this whole mess. And we will both have a lifetime of echocardiograms.

And I’ve got this stage one invasive cancer that apparently is fairly common in women over 60. Women my age aren’t supposed to have it. Because of my, ahem, unusually dense breasts, regular mammograms won’t detect future cancerous growths. I’ve got a lot of MRIs to add to this lifetime.

More immediately, I’ll be having five to six weeks of daily radiation. I’m sure some of you out there have experienced that. I’ll find out what that’s like.

With luck and penny-pinching, we’ll be able to afford all this.

On one of the medical forms I filled out this morning, there was a question about my activities. I wrote that I taught and that I wrote. The oncologist asked me what I wrote. I told her I had a novel coming out this year. She asked me a bit about it and said congratulations. A little while later, she was speaking about my case in a dictaphone type thing, and she said, “The patient is a teacher and a novelist.”

My heart did a little squee. The oncologist said I’m a novelist!

It must be true.

Funny how so many of us–maybe not you though–need to hear someone else say it to make it feel true.

The Magic of Numbers

Numbers are magical. Well, they can be. Numbers go on forever. We need fractions and percentages and formulas. As much as you may hate math, numbers are everywhere. They allow the Internet to work. They make sure you take enough medicine to help you but not kill you.

Then there are those numbers people believe have magical powers. Birthdays and lucky numbers and dates for the apocalypse. Do you believe in numbers like these? Do you take note when the clock says 11:11? Did you feel something significant should’ve happened on 12-12-12?

A new year arrives and what do you do? Write a list of resolutions? Eat black-eyed peas? Kiss someone at midnight?

I’ll be 45 this year. My mother died when she was 45. It’s hard not to give that number weight, especially when I just scheduled an appointment with a surgeon to make sure I don’t actually have breast cancer. My mother didn’t die of cancer though. She had an aneurysm.

But if I give power to lucky numbers, it seems I’d have to give power to the number 45. I don’t want to do that. Would you?

Happy New Year. May the numbers align like stars and bring you luck.

The Questions

My son found the CNN page with profiles and photos of the victims in Newtown. He read every single one, and several he went back to. One little girl, for some reason, struck him more than the others.

An hour later he told me he was thinking about that particular girl a lot. I asked him why he thought that was. He wasn’t sure, but he said, “She seems so alive.” It was her photograph that made her seem that way.

My son is 9, by the way.

He’s had a lot of questions. Many you probably expect.

“Why did he do that to little kids?”
“Why did he hurt his mother?”
“What were the kids doing in class when he got there?”
“What do you think they were thinking when it happened?”
“Do you think any kids were absent that day?”
“One of the teachers killed was a substitute. How do you think the regular teacher feels cause she wasn’t there?”
“How did the parents feel when they were told?”
“I think if he came to my school, my classroom is too far away from the front door. He wouldn’t have time to get to our room. Don’t you think?”

Granted, he didn’t ask them in any rapid fire way. Just every so often as they occurred to him and as we talked about the shooting.

I still remember when I was a kid and heard about the shooting in a San Ysidro McDonald’s. For years and years after that, I never went into a place without checking the exits and possible hiding places. Just in case. Sometimes I still check for these things.

What news event do you remember from your childhood? Any story from the news ever have any lasting effects?

A student told me today that in her country if you told people you were afraid of dogs, they would think you were normal. But if you told people you were afraid of spiders, they would think you were crazy.

Well, okay.

I learn something every day.

Have you learned anything surprising lately?

Perfect Sentences and Other Lies

Some people promise to diet or to exercise every day or to be more patient. Do you do that? Swear you’re going to be different and somewhere between three minutes and three days that is all shot to hell?

Mine is that I’m going to be less neurotic.

I’ve been trying to come up with one sentence that captures the feelings/mood/idea of my novel. I felt like I’d been left alone on the edge of a mountain with the instructions to fly down or don’t come down at all and all I’ve got are some feathers and duct tape.

But really. All I have to do is write a sentence. Why I have to make it difficult is beyond me.

So, I’ve come up with a sentence. Here’s my first draft. I’m not happy with the word ‘trauma’ but can’t think of a better word right now.

Two sixteen-year-old girls, best friends, use magic and their wits to recover from trauma and to get revenge.

Thoughts?

Is that the best you can do?

In high school I spent one year on the yearbook staff. I started the class really excited, and I ended the class hoping never to speak of it again. When my mother saw the section I’d worked on–the advertising section, which I hated but did work hard on–she said, “That doesn’t look very good. That’s the best you can do?”

Or maybe she said, “That’s terrible.”

It’s hard to remember exactly because what I remember best was the pain that went through my chest. My mother wasn’t a mother of false praise.

The ads weren’t good though. I’d struggled with designing the ads. My relationship with the teacher was a disaster since I realized I wasn’t pretty enough to warrant his attention.

Maybe that wasn’t the problem. But I knew the popular boys and girls invited him to their parties and that sometimes he went.

You probably don’t need to be told I wasn’t ever invited to these parties. But I didn’t want to go to their parties. I wanted my mother to tell me I’d done a great job, that I had talent, that I should be an artist when I grew up.

She said (and this I remember), “I wouldn’t show that work to anyone if I were you.”

Twenty-five years later and I still haven’t.

So, last night I sent my “final” draft of my novel to my publisher. (Final until I get edits backs, that is.) All I have to do is wait for her to read the rewrites and tell me what she thinks.

It’s funny how something said to you years ago can stay lodged in your brain for decades. I wouldn’t show that work to anyone.

And here’s me trying to send my novel out for the world to see. (Although, the world isn’t going to see it. A tiny group of friends and some random strangers.)

We’ll see how it goes.

Editing: The Mutant Virus Edition

If you want to be a published author, you have to edit your work. No matter the publishing path, editing is along the way.

Sometimes editing makes me feel like I know what I’m doing. Really. I see the problem. Take my pen to it. Look at the page and see all those marks, and hey, me, I’ve accomplished something. I can even flash that paper at someone and say, “Look what I did today!” It’s a bit like showing off my latest skate injury. It hurts, but I’m proud.

But editing (writing) isn’t always like that. Sometimes looking at my work makes me feel as if a flesh eating virus has wheedled, twisted, and hooked its way from my brow to my heart. I will have to wear a veil to hide the horror of it.

Yes, I like a bit of melodrama.

But a bit like the psychological drama of showing your face to the world if you know the world won’t want to see it…the world may not want to see my writing (I type here, showing the world my writing…). Maybe it would be best to veil the words. What is the point of showing one’s self to the world? Why do we want to do it?

No, I’m not going to cover up and hide. I am going to edit and all will be fine. I am a tiny speck of space dust and my book added to the planet won’t affect the earth’s gravitational pull or anything. But eventually it will make me happy. Happy-ish. The happy-ish speck of space dust.

Sounds like a comic strip.

So, when you edit your work, how do you feel?

The Wish Gods

Sometimes I feel like this guy.

I was nine when I understood what people meant by, “Be careful what you wish for.”

I’d wish for my dad to get married. Well, okay. Maybe the expression should be, “Be careful what you wish for unless you’re very, very specific.”

If I’d known that at nine, I’d have wished for my dad to marry someone nice who won’t cause me to leave home and to steal my own stuff.

Perhaps the wish gods are the most wicked of all the gods. The wish gods work in tandem. The first one plants the wish in your mind. For example, you might suddenly realize you wish to be a writer.

The wish grows. The wish roots itself deep in your mind and your soul. By the time you realize you might have been had by a wish god, the roots are so deep, you can’t rip it out without ripping yourself apart.

And then perhaps comes the other wish god who gives you what you want.

Oh. In the meantime, other wishes have been planted, and you are a big wishing mess. And no god has created a big enough wish weed whacker to get this under control.

Okay, enough of that.

I’ve gotten my wish, and that is a great thing. I just hope I know what I’m doing.

And don’t get me started on the hope god.