Tag: cancer recovery

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Scenes from quarantine, cont’d.

Of a Saturday, I find myself ironing linens. This is not something I ever would’ve done P.P. (Pre-Pandemic). Generally speaking, I find the interminable housekeeping necessitated by life under quarantine obnoxious and exhausting. But pressing these napkins is somehow neither. Perhaps it’s because they belonged to my grandparents, whom I miss and think of often. My grandfather is still living and my grandmother is not, but I imagine she ironed these, lips pursed, with kids or cats underfoot and various worries on her mind, just as I am now. So the chore becomes a way of communing with her across the time and space that separate us, a kind of unexpected intimacy brought on by the stains and creases and caught threads of daily use and daily life, hers as well as mine. Were they entertaining when this one appeared, I wonder, and if so, who? What was the occasion? Was I in the world yet? Where did the napkins come from—a wedding gift, perhaps? A purchase? An heirloom?

I am also, in my ironing reverie, reminded of another time I did something like this, while working as an au pair in France. Then, at twenty-three, I found myself charged with not only napkins, but sheets and dress shirts and tablecloths, none of which I actually knew how to iron, having owned few such items, myself (I certainly never ironed my sheets). I would stand at that ironing board in vexed confusion, wondering what in the hell I was doing with my life (the refrain of my twenties, if there ever was one). And then I would botch the job, particularly if it was a dress shirt. This would invariably lead to a row with the family that employed me—mutterings from the mother, an outburst from the father—after which I would be sent to fetch fresh baguettes on a bicycle. I ordered these from the same pitiless woman in the same shop, every day, in tears. It was like living in a fucked up fairytale.

Which is a bit how the world feels now, some twenty years later, amid plague, unemployment, injustice and the abiding imperative—dare I say pleasure?—of laundry.

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Let the record show…

…that sometimes, they were happy. There is so much to miss re: life before quarantine that finding oneself feeling good, while in it, can come as a shock. Yesterday, for example, was the official start of my daughter’s summer and it was, well, lovely. The hours–even minutes–passed at a leisurely pace, even more so than a usual Saturday. There were no forgotten online assignments to track down; no flooded inboxes; no Brain Pop, Splash Learn, Freckle, or other inane platforms to remember and toggle between. The heat had arrived, along with the mosquitoes, but both belong here and we went outside, anyway. Meals also punctuated the day in such a welcome, ritualistic way that I took notice. Perhaps because it was exactly one year ago now that I finished radiation and found myself floundering without them. Everything I consumed then was liquid, meager, awful to taste, and painful to swallow. The fact that I can enjoy all foods again is something to celebrate, so I am by noting it here. I hope I don’t forget how I felt last night while preparing dinner–how happy and at ease, despite everything–because such moments are rare, for me and for so many others suffering, each in their own way, at this time. My daughter thundered around the living room in her gymnastics unitard, dead fucking serious about the improvised routine she was performing for no one, while my husband folded laundry to a delightfully random playlist of his choosing–Curtis Mayfield, Procol Harum, the Beatles–and I thought, yes. This is it. This is everything.

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Life under quarantine

What, exactly, does it tell us? Several things:

  1. Even the simplest tasks are performed under a pervasive general strain on all of one’s faculties during this bizarre, sad, and maddening time.
  2. I am well enough, and my daughter is well enough, to undertake such simple, ostensibly heartening tasks.
  3. Somehow, we have an abundance of construction paper, but a dearth of the other kind (see below).
  4. I remain a perfectionist when it comes to many things, even under the shadow of a pandemic that, it would seem, might provide a welcome opportunity not to be SO. DAMN. ANAL.
  5. My daughter and I have creative differences.
  6. Our ability to reconcile these differences and complete the friggin’ rainbow has become an internalized metaphor for–and imagined predictor of–my own ability to get to the other side of this day, week, month, etc. in one piece.

As of right now, the rainbow remains… in progress. Will (try to) report back.

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There’s no place but home…

This is the album that got me through yesterday, courtesy of my dad’s old record collection. You would think that, having survived a year of something akin to self-quarantining during my recent cancer treatment, I’d be primed for this new normal. I’m not. A curious corollary of acute illness is the myopic focus it induces (something I wrote about in a previous post), but the current COVID-19 crisis has resulted in pain and anxiety that feel much more diffuse. I’ve wanted to write here again in an attempt to manage it, but finding the time, space, and energy has proven difficult while working and parenting from home. Here’s hoping that might change.

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Turn and face the strange…

A year out from my cancer diagnosis and a month out from my last scan, I still find myself trying to reconcile how I thought I would be feeling now with how I am. The following is excerpted from a journal I keep more or less sporadically:

The depression I was feeling a week or so ago now appears to have morphed into anxiety. It hits me when I arrive at work in the mornings–really, whenever I leave my daughter and husband. […] The news I follow (both local and national) every day is no help. I’m anxious about the rise of white supremacy, coronavirus, fires in Australia, the fact that the common flu killed an otherwise healthy thirty-five-year-old man… If I list them all here, will my worries go away?

I guess it’s part of post-cancer existence, this knowing in one’s bones–no longer just one’s head–that life is both fleeting and finite. Like those coins in the Borges story, this knowledge is so heavy induces a kind of paralysis; I don’t want to go anywhere, do anything, take risks. Which is not where I was a few months into my recovery after treatment. Then, I felt uninhibited and impulsive, like I wanted to grab life by the horns and wrestle it to the ground, or ride it over a cliff. I contemplated things like dyeing my hair (which I did), and getting a tattoo (which I didn’t). I felt hungry for new experiences, for higher frequencies of feeling that now terrify me. Who was that person, born again and almost feral at forty? It’s decidedly not who I am this morning. 

I share this because I thought perhaps readers in a similar boat could relate.

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We’re not always wearing war paint

sometimes my body reminds me
that I am in it

the walls of your veins are thick
she says with annoyance

shouldn’t they be? I think with the same
the nurse is nonetheless kind (if also
impatient)

I recline in the chair, my head turned away
from the tourniquets and needles
and weep

which happens almost involuntarily now
whenever I am back where it all began
a year ago or so

as though in this position, passive and supine,
when things are being done to me
I finally have permission (or maybe it’s
privacy) to feel

everything I wouldn’t let myself
before
or
in-between

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Birthday Greetings

Yesterday I turned 40. Cancer has changed my relationship to many things, time being first and foremost among them. I welcomed this birthday with elation, despite the fact that this particular age is dreaded by many. There’s no shortage of over-the-hill/you’re now officially OLD cards and other doomsday paraphernalia out there heralding one’s transition into a new decade (be it 30, 40, 50, or beyond), and I know, from observing those around me, that aging can be an especially fraught experience for women. There is so much cultural currency in youth and beauty–indeed, women often seem valued for these things, alone–that losing them is a terrifying prospect. But, after cancer, I can’t imagine begrudging a single birthday from here on out.

I covet all the years.