You can’t run from trouble…
Posted: May 20, 2012 Filed under: literature | Tags: bendy straws, bestselling books, Cutting for Stone, flashbacks, Gregory David Robers, mycobacterium fortuitum, post-mastectomy infection, psychological effects of cancer, PTSD, running from trouble, Shantaram, Uncle Remus 22 Comments »It’s a quiet Sunday morning, and I’m alone with my thoughts. I’m up earlier than I might have chosen, thanks to one hungry little piggy. After a Friday night of interrupted sleep and a Saturday full of tennis, errands, swimming laps and a late dinner with a favorite cousin, I may well have stayed in bed a while. However, savoring a slumbering house amidst hte sunlight pouring in through the trees and hearing the sweet sound of birdsong while sipping a cup of strong coffee is better than sleeping in.
Plus it gives me time to read my book, Shantaram, which I’ve been dying to dive into but haven’t found the time. It’s been likened to Cutting for Stone, one of my all-time most favorite books ever. If it’s half as good as CFS, I’ll be one happy reader.
Quick synopsis of Shantaram: Mr Lindsay, our protagonist, has escaped from an Australian prison and fled to Bombay. There he meets Prabaker, a native of the slums who renames Lindsay “Lin” and becomes his always-smiling, eternally joyful guide to the big city. Lin falls for Karla, a mysterious woman with sea-green eyes, and pursues her amidst the backdrop of a lively bar called Leopold’s. Lin is “a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, and a picaresque hero” who delves into the black-market world of false documents. I’m not very far into the 944 pages of adventure, but am intrigued.
As I settled in to read this fine morning, I came across an especially well-written passage, which brought me up short. Lin is talking to his new friend Didier in the bar about some of the more unsavory patrons among them. In an effort to avoid being overheard by the bad guys, Didier was “speaking out of the corner of his mouth, like a prisoner under the eyes of the wardens.”
A nice metaphor, for sure, but it gets better:
“In Australian prisons, that whispering technique is known as side-valving. The expression spoke itself clearly in my mind and, together with Didier’s mannerism, the words put me back in a prison cell. I could smell the cheap disinfectant, hear the metal hiss of the keys, and feel the sweating stone under my fingertips. Flashbacks are common to ex-prisoners, cops, soldiers, ambulance drivers, fire fighters, and others who see and experience trauma. Sometimes the flashback is so sudden, and so inappropriate to the surrounding circumstance, that the only sane reaction is foolish, uncontrollable laughter.”
I had a flashback myself last week, and while it didn’t lead me to foolish, uncontrollable laughter, it almost set off a full-blown PTSD attack. I was rushing out the door to get one kid to school and head to the gym, my usual weekday routine. I’m a stickler for taking my own cup to the gym instead of using the styrofoam ones provided. As if our bulging landfills need another cup tossed on the heap. In my haste to get out the door, I grabbed a straw for my cup and scooted out into the garage and into the car. It wasn’t until I was into my workout and gulping water like a crazy person that I realized the new batch of straws I’d bought were bendy straws.
Big deal, right? Bendy straws can be useful, especially if one is reclining while drinking. Or if, say, one is hospitalized for countless days after a post-mastectomy infection. Yessiree, folks, a simple, innocent bendy straw sent me straight from my normal routine of a morning workout directly to the days of being captive in a hospital bed, held hostage by a nasty mycobacterium. Just as Lin was instantly transported from a bar in Bombay to the hated Australian prison cell, I was back in the hospital bed, raging with fever and sick, sick, sick while a nasty bug set up shop under my newly implanted tissue expander. A one-way ticket to Crazy Town in hand, I took the express train down (bad) memory lane.
I wasn’t even thinking about infections, hospitals, antibiotics, or breast cancer when the flashback struck, but I suppose that’s the nature of flashbacks. Triggered by sights, smells, or sounds or, in my case, straws, flashbacks take over and not only interrupt our present business but also disrupt the rest of the day with their nasty after-effects. Interesting how bad memories are just as powerful as good ones. Unlike the good memories, which fill us with warmth and comfort, bad memories suffuse our souls with fear, anxiety, and panic.
The bendy straw that triggered this particular flashback went straight into the trash, and I tried my best to go about my day like a normal person. Finish the workout, chit-chat with my fellow gym rats, reserve a tennis court on the way out, get in the car, drive to the grocery store, fill my cart, unload the loot, take a shower, pick up kids, supervise homework, prepare dinner, clean the kitchen. From the outside, I looked like a normal person doing everyday tasks, but inside I was anything but normal and was once again a cancer patient, fighting my way through uncertainty, confusion, and balls-out fear. In that moment, cancer made me its bitch, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it. The only thing keeping me from a total meltdown was knowing that this flashback would pass, that the terror brought on by a simple bendy straw was fleeting.
But as I talked myself off the ledge with soothing reminders that this too shall pass, I know just as certainly that while the terror will pass, it will also return. Again and again, this flashback will haunt me. Perhaps each time it becomes less rapacious, less capable of felling me in one swift motion, but it will return.
“You can’t run away from trouble. There ain’t no place that far.” ~Uncle Remus
I’m gonna miss you, Maurice
Posted: May 8, 2012 Filed under: kids, literature | Tags: banned books, Caldecott medal, children's literature, Else Holmelund Minarik, Let the Wild Rumpus Start, LIttle Bear, Maurice Sendak, Nutshell LIbrary, Where the Wild Things Are 17 Comments »The literary world suffered a blow today with the news that beloved children’s book author & illustrator Maurice Sendak is dead. Insert sad face here.
I’m a big fan of Sendak, always have been. Long before I became a parent, I had an affinity for children’s books. Years in advance of adding a crib, glider rocker, and Diaper Genie to my decor, I had an extensive library of children’s books. Even if I’d never had kids, I’d still have kid books. One of my most prized possessions is a set of four teeny, tiny books by Sendak. “The Nutshell Library” was published nearly a decade before I was born, but the stories are timeless. Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup With Rice, One Was Johnny, and Pierre A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue may be tiny, but these stories pack a punch. I am physically unable to serve chicken soup without hearing Carole King’s song version of Sendak’s story in my head. “Sipping once, sipping twice….”
Sendak’s characters have been described as bossy, headstrong, and borderline obnoxious. Perhaps that’s why I like them so. In Pierre, the title character is a stubborn boy whose stock reply to everything is “I don’t care.” 
Pierre learns to care, albeit the hard way, when a hungry lion enters the scene and tells Pierre that he will eat him up. When Pierre replies with his usual “I don’t care” the lion follows through on his threat. 
Some may consider this harsh for a kids’ book, but it’s a great lesson in (a) caring; (b) following through; and (c) karma. All important life lessons, in my opinion. The consequences to Pierre’s bad attitude are also foretold in the opening paragraph of the book:
“There Once was a boy named Pierre,
Who only would say, “I don’t Care”
Read his story my friend,
And you’ll find at the end,
That a suitable moral lies there.”
Lesser-known but equally charming are Sendak’s illustrations for Else Holmelund Minarik’s “Little Bear” series. 
When my kids were tiny, there was a Little Bear cartoon that was a favorite in our house. I’ll never forget the day that Payton was at preschool and I turned Little Bear on anyway, because it was such a mainstay of our everyday routine. The books are another series with which I will never part. Perhaps one day I will pass them on to some special little children in my life. Perhaps. No promises.
Similarly, I cherish my copy of In the Night Kitchen. Not because it’s as special to me as Pierre and Little Bear; frankly, the story never grabbed me like the others did. It’s precious to me, though, because of the controversy surrounding main character Mickey’s nudity. Librarians were known to draw a tiny diaper on little Mickey’s bum to cover his nudie-bits. The book was subsequently banned and roundly criticized, which of course made it all the more appealing to me. Betcha the closed-minded book-banners would really get riled up if they knew that Mr Sendak lived an alternative lifestyle. Not that it’s anyone’s business. Long live Mickey and the Night Kitchen. “Stir it! Scrape it! Make it! Bake it!”
Sendak is of course best known for Where the Wild Things Are, the book that defined his career and blew the doors off the genre. No longer would “See Dick run” suffice as prose for the wee set. Published in 1963, Wild Things set Sendak’s career ablaze and upped the ante for anyone who wanted to succeed as a children’s book author. Although he claimed he was not a children’s author; he wrote stories “about human emotion and life,” as he told People magazine in a 2003 interview.“They’re pigeonholed as children’s books but the best ones aren’t — they’re just books,” he said. That’s what I’ve always loved about them. They’re just books. Some children’s books have much more complex storylines and deeper character development than many bestselling grown-up books (Twilight and 50 Shades, this means you).
npr.org
The genre of children’s books would never be the same after Wild Things. Gone was the puffy-cloud, happy-endings arena, and Wild Things depicted a defiant child, Max, in a scary place populated by giant monsters with big teeth (“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.”). In 2006, Sendak told NPR: “The idea of an American children’s book where the child is not perfectly safe was something that was new. I didn’t know it was new, I didn’t set out to break any new ideas. I was just doing what was only in my head.” Sendak reportedly modeled the monsters after his relatives — “who, in his memory at least, had hovered like a pack of middle-aged gargoyles above the childhood sickbed to which he was often confined,” per The New York Times. Somehow I’m picturing Sendak yelling “How ya like me now?” to those relatives.
Sendak’s illustrations are as stunning as his prose is riveting. What’s most amazing to me is that he was largely self-taught, which lends credence to the idea in my head that people who are great at something don’t become great by rote. It’s just there, it’s in them. Greatness is cultivated, refined, and harnessed, but it’s there. That greatness transfers seamlessly onto page after page of Sendak’s words and drawings. He defined generations of childhoods with his signature style: crosshatching, larger-than-life characters, not-always-happy endings. Countless kids learned to love the power of a good story after reading Sendak. The author received heaps of mail from kids, writing on their own or as part of a class project. In a NYT interview, Sendak told of one letter from an 8-year-old boy that stood out in his mind: “Dear Mr. Sendak,How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”
Me too. I’d love to go to where the wild things are and, like Max, declare that it’s time to 
Quote for the day
Posted: April 24, 2012 Filed under: literature | Tags: Emily Dickinson, inspirational quotes, poetry, wedding anniversary 9 Comments »“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” — Emily Dickinson
This is what I think of on my 19th wedding anniversary. Not something flowery and romantic. Sadly, that’s not how I roll. I’m sure there are countless quotes out there in the universe about love and marriage and all that mushy stuff. My tastes, however, run to Miss Dickinson and her adage. This quote always makes me think about a door flung wide open and a million different possibilites — all of them fabulous — tripping over each other trying to get in. 
Different strokes, y’all.
The Phantom Tollbooth
Posted: March 27, 2012 Filed under: breast cancer, cancer fatigue, literature | Tags: Chuck Jones, longterm antibiotics, mycobacterium fortuitum, post-mastectomy infection, psychological effects of cancer, PTSD, the Big Dig 6 Comments »Remember that book from back in the day? It was also made into an animated movie by Chuck Jones, the genius of cartooning. It was written before I was born, by Norton Juster and was illustrated by Jules Feiffer. Not sure what either of them has gone on to do, but perhaps the Tollbooth was enough.
thenewyorker.com
It’s the story of a boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth, which he explores in a toy car. Along the way he becomes lost in the Doldrums, where thinking and laughing are strictly prohibited, and is rescued by Tock, a lovely giant watchdog with an alarm clock attached to his belly. The parallels between this story and the cancer “journey” are many.
I was thinking of The Phantom Tollbooth yesterday as I noticed a phantom pain deep in the area formerly known as my right breast, where the evil post-mastectomy infection set up camp and decided to stay awhile. The pain itself wasn’t strong enough to take my breath away, but the implications were, and my mind immediately began racing: what if the infection is back? what if it never fully went away? There were signs of that damned infection, after all, during The Big Dig, which was 9 months after the infection first made itself known.
It’s been a year since The Big Dig, which was my best option for defense against the infection after 267 days of oral antibiotics didn’t fully slay that beast. Nearly a year later, a random pain in the area of my body that was my Ground Zero still has the power to bring me to my knees. Not because it hurts so badly, but because of what it represents.
The idea of the infection once again rearing its ugly head scares me. A lot. I don’t think about it often because I’m busy living my life, but once in a while, as in the case with the phantom pain, the thought does cross my mind. If it did come back, or if it reasserted itself after lying dormant, I would freak out. And yes, that is the correct medical term for becoming reacquainted with the mycobacterium that made a cancer diagnosis at age 40 seem like a walk in the park. The cancer part was easy (relatively speaking) but the myco damn near destroyed me.
Looking back on that dark period of my life is like watching a movie. I see this girl who’s going about her charmed life. Sure there are things that could be better but for the most part it was indeed a charmed life. She lives this charmed life rather out loud, and does “all the right things” to ensure that the charmed life has plenty of staying power. Baseline mammograms at age 36 because of her sweet mama’s premature death; a meat-free, plant-based diet free from preservatives and other nasty; daily exercise; a premium placed on a good night’s sleep; plentiful fresh air and clean water; an all-out avoidance of hormone-filled dairy products for her and meat products for her kids; a plan to deal with the stresses that sometimes darkened her door.
This girl was the last person you might expect to be felled by cancer. And yet, she was.
It’s hard for me to recall those dark days. Of course I know it happened and I was there, but my brain seems to protect me from all the gritty details. After taking in the diagnosis, deciding on the bilateral mastectomy, enduring the surgery and thinking I was on the road to recovery, the infection hit and knocked the wind right out of me.
There’s a vivid PTSD associated with the whole infection thing. I’d bet there’s a whole separate PTSD associated with the cancer thing, too, and it comes out in strange ways, such as a phantom pain sending me straight from normalcy to crazy town without stopping to collect my $200. Could be that the phantom pain in my chest was from 4 sets of tennis on Sunday after a tough upper-body workout on Friday. Or it could be from the wear & tear of multiple tissue excisions and general gutting of the infected skin during the infection’s salad days. When I was a kid, I had pneumonia, and some part of the illness settled in my left lung. For years after that illness, I’d often feel a pain/fatigue in that same spot. Perhaps the phantom pain in my chest is similar.
Very likely it’s nothing to worry about, but once you’ve danced with the devil that is cancer, any twinge or spot or pain sets you on high alert. Some of us head straight for the catastrophic death spiral my sweet friend Lauren writes about. As she so knowingly puts it “The catastrophic death spiral makes us think a lump in our thigh is thigh cancer, a headache is brain cancer, and shortness of breath after running is surely announcing lung cancer. The catastrophic death spiral is the vortex that is cancer.” My recent phantom pain sent me spiraling before I had a chance to reel myself back in to the land of rational thought. It’s worrisome enough to have already dealt with the havoc that cancer brings, but to also feel the aftershocks of that disaster just stinks.
I expect that the constant looking over my shoulder is common in cancerland. But I don’t like it. I’m rather known for my heightened sense of justice and the idea that if you do the hard work/right thing, you’ll get the payout. But bad things happen to good people every day, and life isn’t fair. People who take good care of themselves get cancer, and people who treat their bodies to a buffet of Animal House-style debauchery outlive them. I know this, yet I’m still brought up short by the phantom pain’s effect on me and how quickly and effortlessly I returned to the catastrophic death spiral.
I was probably foolish to think that there would be an end to the cancer “journey” and that the incidences that trigger PTSD would gradually disappear. I should have known that even after logging many miles and paying the requisite tolls in this “journey,” I would forever be circling, just shy of my destination, and always consulting the map. Once Milo returns home from his trip on the tollbooth, he sees a note, which reads, “FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY.” I’m looking for my note and wishing I knew the way.
Phantom Tollbooth's Map of Lands Beyond
Being real
Posted: November 22, 2011 Filed under: breast cancer, literature | Tags: bilateral mastectomy, classic children's books, life after cancer, Margery Williams, psychological effects of breast cancer, The Velveteen Rabbit 4 Comments »”It doesn’t happen all at once, you become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” – Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
The Velveteen Rabbit is one of my all-time favorite books. I don’t recall reading it as a child, but I do love it as an adult. I was sorting through one of the never-ending piles of kid junk upstairs and found my copy of The Velveteen Rabbit. I sat down in the midst of my junk pile to re-read it. It had been too long; I certainly haven’t read it since breast cancer so rudely interrupted my otherwise-fabulous life.
The passage above jumped out at me, and stuck with me after I finished reading the story and got back to my junk pile. As I tossed worn-down erasers and fuzzless tennis balls into the trash and stacked some outgrown books for donation, I realized why that passage was stuck in my brain: it speaks to an issue near & dear to every cancer patient’s heart — the idea of being “done” and being able to get back to our “real” lives.
This is a recurring theme in the life of a cancer patient, whether stoic and methodical or impatient and impetuous. We want our real lives back. You know, the lives we lead before receiving the phone call from the doctor’s office that changed the course of our lives. In my case, it was a life of a million ordinary things — carpool, homework, packing lunches, making dinner, scrubbing infield dirt out of white baseball pants, playing tennis, and raising my kids. Those million ordinary things added up to make a full and contented life.
The life I lead now is quite different. So much so that I’m not even sure what my real life is anymore. I do know that in my pre-cancer life, anxiety didn’t plague me like it does now. I slept easily and soundly without visions of recurrence dancing through my head. I woke up each day ready to attack my to-do list and carve out a little time for me as well.
In my “real” life, my calendar wasn’t chock-full of doctor’s appointments, and now my life seems to revolve around them. Appointments for follow-ups after surgery, appointments to check blood work and feel for enlarged lymph nodes, appointments to monitor the prescription drugs that are a part of my everyday routine, appointments to stem the ever-present threat of lymphedema from the lymph nodes that were sacrificed during my mastectomy, appointments to plan the next surgery necessitated by a hungry cancer beast with far-reaching tentacles.
My “real” life wasn’t bifurcated into B.C. (before cancer) and A.C. (after cancer). Instead of marking time by the milestones of my kids’ lives, I now keep track based on which stage of the cancer “journey” I was in when said event occurred. To wit: Payton’s 11th birthday was 10 days before my bilateral mastectomy and the same day as my PET scan, to determine just how long this cancer beast’s tentacles were. The first Taylor Swift concert Macy & I attended was 2 weeks after the mastectomy. The post-mastectomy infection struck 5 days after my 41st birthday. Payton’s baseball team’s first trip to the State Championships coincided with the second hospitalization because of the infection. The weekend before Payton started middle school I was in the hospital again because of that damned infection. I had a bone scan the same day our new refrigerator was delivered. Payton’s first baseball game of the spring season was the night after my reconstruction surgery. School started 2 days before my first revision surgery. My second revision was 4 days before Halloween.
I’m trying to get back to my “real” life but am learning that some things will never be the same. Like The Velveteen Rabbit, becoming real again means my hair is different from the hormone-manipulation hell required for pre-menopausal cancerchicks. My eyes haven’t dropped out just yet, but my vision has changed (again from the hormones) enough that my Lasik surgery 7 years ago might as well never have happened. I’m for sure loose in the joints from the daily dose of Tamoxifen, and am getting used to the recurring bone pain as well. I am most definitely very shabby overall, with more grey hair and new wrinkles from the stress of life with cancer. Some days it’s hard to decide which has been battered more — my body or my soul.
And like The Velveteen Rabbit’s experience, it doesn’t happen all at once. It takes time. A long time. I’m not very patient, and much of this “journey” has been a true test of my limited stores of patience. They say it’s a virtue, but one that I don’t have. I’m still waiting to just become. Those 2 little words, “You become,” represent what I’m working toward in getting back to my “real” life. It definitely doesn’t happen to people who break easily. Cancer is a mean and vicious enemy. Many times on this “journey” I’ve heard myself saying out loud, How much more do I have to take? And the answer has always been, I don’t know how much, but more. Always more. If I were one who was easily broken, I’m not sure how this story would have played out. Most likely, I’d be in a 12-step program for Oxycontin addiction. Or I’d be a repeat visitor to the Betty Ford Clinic. What I do know is that there’s always more. And that it’s a daily battle to get back to “real.”
My other life
Posted: June 6, 2011 Filed under: breast cancer, literature | Tags: blog, book club, breast cancer, cancer battle, cancer diagnosis, family, kids, missing mom, my life before cancer, PTA, raising young kids, recovery, room moms, Scholastic Books, suburban moms, survivor, VIPS 5 Comments »
One of the many blogs I read is a fine one published by a lovely woman named Marie in Ireland. It’s called Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer, and Marie’s goal via her blog is to provide some guidance on how to navigate the “post-treatment limbo” that cancer survivors find themselves in once “it” is all “over.” There’s plenty of information out there for those who’ve recently been diagnosed and for those who are actively in treatment, but not much out there for the “what next?” portion of the “cancer journey.” I was honored to be a guest blogger on Marie’s site in February, and I always come away from Marie’s blog feeling enlightened and empowered. (And really, I’m not just sucking up because she’s giving away a copy of Sheryl Crow’s new cookbook, which I really, really, really want. I mean it. Marie’s blog is fantastic.)
Marie posed a challenge to her blog community to write a post about our “other” lives, about who we are when we’re not fighting cancer. We cancer-chicks who blog tend to know a lot of intimate details about each other, as is the nature of the beast we all have in common, but we don’t always know a lot about each other besides the beast.
Never one to back away from a challenge, I ruminated on my B.C. (before cancer) life. It took me awhile to remember, so wrapped up have I been in the cancer-vixen lifestyle. I racked my brain to recall what it was that I used to do with myself absent multiple doctor’s visits, endless testing, countless trips to the pharmacy, and hours of feeling yucky.
It was a perfectly ordinary life. I’m not one for a lot of drama; I’ve been to high school, and don’t have any desire to replay it. I have no patience for grown-up “mean girls” and so have a tight circle of true friends. We live an ordinary suburban life, most of us at home during the day, having forgone careers to raise kids, although several of my besties do work outside the home and do amazing things like crude trading and nursing. Ok, I’d better clarify: one friend trades crude oil, and another is a nurse. Since this blog is usually about all things boob-related, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m talking about crude nursing, as in off-color breastfeeding.
So my life was pretty ordinary, pre-cancer. Ordinary, but good.
I left my editing job 12 years ago, when Payton was born, to become a full-time mommy, and after Macy joined the herd my workload doubled but so did my heart. As my kids got older and started school, my life took on the pattern of theirs and I volunteered at their school a lot while also spending some time doing my own thing. I walked that fine line between being a full-time mom but still being my own person. Like millions of other moms at home raising young kids, I packed my kids’ lunches while doing laundry and tried in vain to keep up with the household chores. I stole some time from the domestic hustle & bustle every day to go to the gym or play tennis, and made my to-do list while waiting in the carpool line.
My pre-cancer schedule was pretty full of ordinary things: kids’ dentist appointments, play-dates, sports, lessons, and parties. I served on the PTA board, was a tenured room mom, and worked the school book fair every year. Shortly after my mom died I was at the book fair, surrounded by books and overcome with loss. I missed my mom so much; she was an avid reader and we always talked about the latest stack of books on our nightstands. I met another mom who was volunteering that day. Jenny was new to our school, having recently relocated to Sugar Land. We chatted about books, and she shared with me that her dad had recently died, and she was swamped by grief, too. I decided then and there to start a book club, and to invite her to join me. Instead of allowing my sadness to rule, I wanted to find a way to diffuse it.
I had no idea at that time that Jenny was a breast cancer survivor and would become my mentor and tour guide through the “cancer journey.”
Meeting Jenny was an extraordinary event in my ordinary, pre-cancer life. Along with my Runnin’ Buddy and our nurse practitioner friend Laura, Jenny and I comprise a quartet of book-lovers who meet once a month and discuss the book we’ve read. Five years later, we’re still going strong. We’ve read some amazing books as well as a few clunkers, and are constantly on the look-out for the next great read.
When I first started running the book club, I would research book group discussion questions and print out a list for each of us. Over time, I’ve gotten lazy and now just highlight an interesting passage, a particularly pivotal plot point, or a bit of prose that speaks to me for whatever reason. This is the basis for our book club’s discussions nowadays.
I’ve always loved books, for their ability to transport us to other worlds. The written word is precious to me, and I suppose it’s in my genes; my mom was an English teacher, after all. I chose my college major (journalism) based on the right ratio of the least amount of math & science and the maximum amount of literature. My career in publishing and editing surprised no one, and I continued to read copiously after leaving the industries for motherhood. True, most of what I read was written for the preschool crowd with a heavy emphasis on pictures, but I started building my kids’ libraries long before they could read. I suppose it was perfectly natural for me to start a book club.
Just in case you’re wondering if I sit around and read all day when I’m not fighting cancer, the answer is no. I spend as much time as humanly possible playing tennis, then I sit around and read for what’s left of the day.
Ha!
Preach it, GB Shaw
Posted: April 23, 2011 Filed under: breast cancer, literature | Tags: Antibiotics, cancer battle, cancer diagnosis, drug therapy, Fabian Society, George Bernard Shaw, infectious disease, Labour Party, London School of Economics, morning sickness, nausea, Oscar Wilde, post-mastectomy, probiotics. Dublin, recovery, survivor 2 Comments »Editor’s Note: There’s a glitch on WordPress that is hiding my hard returns, so this is one long post without the usual breaks in text to give the eye a rest. Apologies.
“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”— George Bernard Shaw
Love this quote. Love GB Shaw, too. Apparently he didn’t like the “George” and refused to use it, personally or professionally. That’s why I call him GB Shaw.
googleimages.com
Quixote deserves a post of its own
Posted: April 19, 2011 Filed under: breast cancer, literature | Tags: Austin Powers, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Hunterwasser, New Zealand, Picasso, Quixote winery, tulip tree 3 Comments »
Most are familiar with Picasso’s 1955 sketch based on Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Done during his Blue, Rose, and Cubist periods, the “insightful, sassy, and ubiquitous” sketch has been described as “catchy and full of bright humor” by people who know a lot more about art than I do, but I do know that I’d be quite pleased to have those same attributes ascribed to this little blog.
The fact that Picasso’s sketch went on to become a minor masterpiece is funny in and of itself, but the idea that his inspiration for the masterpiece was a 5×9-inch nut-and-bolt sculpture of our literary hero and his trusty sidekick really makes me laugh. The little sculptures are themselves ubiquitous in Spain, and Picasso, who is said to have had a “sharp, roving eye” and to have been “constantly searching for likely subjects and was not hesitant to borrow from others” parlayed a simple souvenir into a bit hit. My eye isn’t as sharp, but it is roving and always on the look-out for inspiration for this little blog, so I like to think I have something in common with Senor Picasso.
Our recent and glorious trip to Napa provides me with a whole slew of inspiration. Today’s post is dedicated to Quixote winery. What an incredible place. They make great wine, too, BTW.
The winery was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an artist, architect, philosopher, and environmentalist from Vienna. ”We’re here to give pleasure. With Cervantes’ Don Quixote as our muse, let us all explore the difference between appearances and reality and engage in the noble pursuits of a knight errant.” In designing and creating Quixote winery, he endeavored to “show how basically simple it is to have paradise on earth.” Well done, Herr Hundertwasser, well done.
Hundertwasser with René Brô in the Castiglione pavillon at Saint-Mandé near Paris in front of the mural they painted together, 1950 Photo: Hundertwasser Archive
Before I get into what makes this winery so darn special I must give a teensy bit of insight into Herr Hundertwasser. This guy was nuts, but in a good way. Not sure I’d want to be within spitting distance of him at a dinner party, but I sure do love his work. He’s a true artist, one who says wacky things like “Progression is retrogression and retrogression becomes progression,” and describes his paintings as “vegetative.” I believe him, too, because our tour guide at the winery told us that during the 10 years that Hundertwasser designed Quixote winery, he ran the California hills buck naked. He felt the need to become one with nature in order to impose this physical structure upon Her innate beauty. Hope he used a lot of sunblock. He believed in the power of nature, saying “You are a guest of nature. Behave.” This real-life Austin Powers was buried sans clothes and coffin, on his land in New Zealand in 2000 and a majestic tulip tree towers over his gravesite. Let’s all observe a moment of silence in honor of this nut-job artist.
Everything about this winery has character. Every single thing. Even the signpost, pointing the unsuspecting visitor toward an experience that will make ya go hmmmmm. Kudos to Doug & Amy Ashmore for suggesting this winery. In the multitude of wineries in Napa, it can be tricky to decide which ones to visit. The simple demands of time and liver space dictate that one cannot visit them all, so one must make choices. Listen, people: if you go to Napa at any point in your lifetime and fail to choose Quixote winery, I will never speak to you again.
And you’ll be missing out on an experience that defies words adequate to describe it.
This photo is tiny, and in all my Internet searching I couldn’t find one bigger, but look closely and you’ll see the man himself with a ruler. Only the ruler is bent. Because the man was too. He didn’t like straight lines, and the roof and floors of the winery are angled and slanted.
The winery itself is full of art. Cool stuff abounds, in the offices, even the restroom. This sculpture spoke to me. I love the lines, the exaggerated effects that all come together to tell a story. Then I read the story, on the front, and loved it even more: “Start a saloon in your own home. Go to your wife and give her a hundred dollars to buy a gallon of whiskey.” Now that’s a philosophy.
This creation was simply amazing. I don’t even know how to describe it, so here’s the rudimentary breakdown: cogs and wheels on the bottom powering thin metal spears upon which paper birds perch, and once the mechanism is engaged, flutter and fly at different heights and varying speeds. Wow. Just wow.
The column above and to the left, with the white body featuring a long crack, is emblematic of Hunterwasser’s genius. And his insanity. The story is that someone remarked within earshot of the artist that the building was ‘perfect.’ So he picked up a sledgehammer and smashed the column twice on purpose because nothing made by man is ever perfect. Though flawed, it can still be beautiful and even the imperfections can be delightful in their own right. Some said the crack should be “fixed” or covered up, but Mr H said no way, the crack is part of the beauty and tells an important story. What that story is may vary from person to person, but for me the story is that we are all flawed, yet remain upright. The Birthday Girl was also struck by this story, and immediately thought of my “cancer journey.” She made me pose for a picture in front of the cracked column, but I liked the artwork next to it more, so that’s the pic you’re getting.
The photo below is a photo of a photo in the tasting room at Quixote. I’d love to know the backstory, but suffice to say that I took this photo with Macy in mind, and fastforwarded many years to when she is a grown woman, and hopefully has a giraffe leaning in her window for a kiss. No idea who the woman is or what kind of relationship she has with that giraffe, and I don’t care. It’s a delightful portait of love plain & simple, and it made me think of my sweet little girl and her all-encompassing love for animals. 
Hunterwasser’s goal in creating Quixote winery was to incorporate it into the existing terrain, and from the road, all you see is the golden turret on the far right. Mr H believed that a golden turret elevated man’s sense of self.
The path from the road up into the hills leads you to the white “tiled” entrance. Notice the curved line of the roof. No straight lines for Mr H. 
Mr H believed that “color is king” and there is a feast of color for the eyes everywhere you look at Quixote, but sprinkled subtly and judiciously, so as to not overwhelm.
This photo is pitiful but is meant to convey the deep aquamarine of one section of a column. A small burst of color that expresses a whole lot.
More curved walls. I bet the contractor was ready to murder Mr H many times during construction.
The barrels are integral to every winery. Quixote’s barrels are colorful and expressive, natch. In the bottom photo, you can really see the slanted roof.
Even the windows, doors, and bookcases have character. The open doorway on the right leads into the tasting room.
The tasting room. The photo of the woman & her giraffe is on the ledge, just under the orange column. The light fixture was an explosion of white ribbon that looked more wedding bouquet than light. Beautiful. 
And of course, the star of the show. 
The tasting was sublime. Delicious wine with cheese & crackers peppered with charming asides about the artist and the process that resulted in Quixote winery.
Trevor and Keith soaking up the patio after the yummy tasting. Keith is utilizing one of the built-in stools that are conveniently placed there for the spent wine-taster.
How clever.
There exists a group photo of us on this patio, but I can’t find it and am frustrated by looking. Lisa? Thad? Diana? Whoever has it, send it to me, por favor.
The road to Quixote winery leads to an experience I’ll never forget. The art fed my soul. The design amazed my senses. The man who is Hunterwasser wowed me. The wine made there satisfied me and made me smile. And the time spent in that spectacular place with forever friends sustains me.
Ithaka
Posted: March 23, 2011 Filed under: breast cancer, literature | Tags: breast cancer, cancer battle, Cavafy, DIEP, Grateful Dead, Greece, Greeks, Homer, immigrants, Ithaka, Odyssey, plastic surgery, poetry, post-mastectomy, reconstruction, recovery, superhero, survivor, Versed 4 Comments »How appropriate after yesterday’s post that the first thing I read today is an excerpt from the poem “Ithaka” by Constatin Cavafy. Remember that yesterday’s post contained a photo depicting my personal vision of paradise? Guess what Ithaka looks like?
Also appropriate is that Amy Hoover showed up on my doorstep last night with a real-life superhero cape, which I clearly need to continue this “journey.” She doesn’t need a cape, because she really is a superhero, but her youngest son, Carter, has one and was sweet enough to loan it to me. We’re changing the C for Carter to C for Cancer-killer. I love the cape.
I’ve been struggling with the “journey” part of my recovery from major reconstruction surgery. I’m not a journey kind of girl; I’m all about the destination. Don’t care how we get there, it’s the getting there that matters to me.
Well, guess what? On a “cancer journey” you’re never “there” and the idea of being “done” is laughable because there really is no end point. There are transitions and transformations, and at some point one does graduate from cancer patient to cancer survivor, but there aren’t any signposts or mile markers along the way, so hell if I know where I am in this whole journey. I can say that so far, to quote the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Enter Constantin Cavafy. 
Fellow Greek, also a wordsmith (although he was way, way better at the craft than I). He was born and died on the same day, April 29 (1863-1933). I must say, that’s a terrible way to celebrate a birthday; I hope he got a piece of cake before he croaked. I also think it’s terrible, although understandable, that his family chose to Americanize their surname, Kavafis. My dad’s dad came over from “the Old Country,” as the Greeks refer to the homeland, speaking no English with very little money, like millions of other immigrants. Once he settled and raised his family, he wanted them to be Americanized, to shake off the immigrant stink that was considered unsavory, even though the USA is purported to be a melting pot. Thankfully, my Papou did not Americanize our surname, although my dad did change the spelling slightly in 8th grade, from Katopodis to Katapodis, to make it easier for the sports announcers to pronounce it properly; Kat-uh-po-dus instead of Ka-top-uh-dus. True story.
So Kavafis becomes Cavafy, and Constantin writes some poetry. He published more than 150 poems, the most well-known, “Ithaka,” after he turned 40. Some might say he’s a late bloomer, but those of us in the over-40 crowd say, Giddyup.
“Ithaka” was written in 1894, revised in 1910, published in 1911 then published in English in 1924. Talk about a journey: 16 years to complete, then another 13 years to reach a wide audience. I hope Constantin was more patient than I am. I’m sure glad he had a few good years between the poem’s success and his death, and I hope he savored it.
Some believe that the subject of “Ithaka” is Odysseus, from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. I think, however, it applies to anyone who is on a journey, and although Ithaka was the finish line or end point for Odysseus, the location is superceded by the ideal.
“Ithaka” begins with some advice for the traveler, which I think applies to lots of journeys (although on my particular journey I don’t have to “hope the voyage is a long one” because it is, boy howdy it is).
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Well, I certainly have encountered my share of Laistrygonians, Cyclops and angry Poseidons in this “cancer journey.” While Cavafy referenced these giants (cannibals, one-eyed monsters, and the God of the Sea, respectively), I believe such bad-boys take numerous forms and can also be representative of disease, infection, and hardship.
Ok, so far my voyage has indeed been long, with what some would consider adventure and discovery, and full of bad guys, and I honestly haven’t been afraid of them. Frustrated by and utterly sick of them, yes, but not afraid. So far so good.
I’ve tried to keep my thoughts raised high, and thanks to my mom’s “walk on the sunny side of the street” schooling, I think I’ve done that. Sure there have been some bad days, but I’m not going to sit around asking, Why me? when it really doesn’t matter, and it certainly doesn’t change anything.
I can’t say that I have a “rare excitement” stirring my spirit and body, although maybe I did while on morphine. More likely it was while on Versed. That’s one of my favorites; such a happy place.
“Ithaka” goes on to extol the pleasure of steaming into unseen harbors on a summer morning to “buy fine things” and “gather knowledge from their scholars.” Hmmm, exploring, shopping, and learning: now that sounds like my kind of trip. Cavafy implores us to keep Ithaka always in our mind and to remember that “arriving there is what you are destined for.”
Now here’s the part that really speaks to me today, as I continue to struggle with the down-time of recovery, as I want to be “back to normal” and wait impatiently for the passage of time and the reaching of milestones that will prove that it is so.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way.
I have a problem with the idea of the journey lasting for years, even though I know that it’s reality. I can accept it, but I don’t have to like it. I do hope that I am indeed old by the time I reach the island, and I already feel wealthy with all I have gained on the way.
Mr Yeats
Posted: March 17, 2011 Filed under: kids, literature | Tags: Caldecott medal, children's books, Colonel Sanders, Maude Gonne, Maurice Sendak, poems, poetry, St Paddy, St Patricks Day, unrequited love, wild rumpus, William Butler Yeats 2 Comments »I love me some William Butler Yeats, and what better day than St Paddy’s Day to read a little verse by Ireland’s best? If you’re not familiar with Mr Yeats, today is your lucky day. Keep reading; below are my two all-time favorite poems of his. I love, love, love them both. If you don’t have any Yeats in your collection, click here and order some today. I know, I’m bossy but really it’s for your own good and you will probably thank me later.
But first, a little background info: Yeats was born June 13, 1865 (a fellow Gemini, and likely half-crazy like the rest of us twins). His dad was a painter, and Yeats was schooled in art but much preferred poetry, and broke with family tradition to pursue his craft. I’m glad he did. 
He was quite a handsome guy, but wasn’t especially lucky in love. While hard to live that way, I suppose it provided much fodder for his written word. This is my favorite photo of him because of the messy hair and trendy glasses; he could totally pull that look off today, as we speak. I’m not so sure about the Colonel Sanders suit, though. That’s taking it a bit far.
I’m not much of a romantic, and am not very sentimental either (but not quite cold and heartless), but the sweetness of “When You Are Old” gets me every time. I suspect he wrote it about his true love, Maude Gonne (who, by the way, was not his wife; he asked several times but she refused, and they both married other people). The theme of unrequited love is there, among the deep shadows of her eyes and her “changing face.” Now that I too am an old lady with under-eye shadows and a changing (i.e., not so youthful) face, the message of this poem is even more powerful.
The first time I read “The Stolen Child,” I had to sit down and take it all in. It still has that effect on me. I’m already sitting, so I’m good now, but it does move me. I didn’t have kids at the time, was a carefree college girl, and motherhood seemed a very distant destination on that particular world tour. Now that motherhood is my permanent stop, the imagery of the child being lured away “to the waters and the wild, with a faery hand in hand” seems scary and cruel, yet still magical and tempting in its prose. It reminds me a bit of the 
children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, whose brilliance is not something I can do justice to in this space, so I will defer (for now). Again, if you’re not familiar with Where the Wild Things Are, click here and order it today. And so before I get sidetracked and start rambling about how much I love all things Sendak, “Let the wild rumpus start!”
WHEN YOU ARE OLD
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
THE STOLEN CHILD
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,.
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world’s more full of weeping than you
can understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For be comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you.
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