Father Dies, Son Dies, Grandson Dies

When I was younger and felt, as I often did, that I had been the victim of some injustice, my father used to tell me a parable.

He would start telling it, and I would roll my eyes. Because I'd heard it before, and teenagers often roll their eyes when they think they know something already. But I also liked the story, and I always enjoyed my father telling it. So I listened.




Once upon a time, a holy man was wandering across China. He came to a farmer's humble home, and knocked on the door to ask if he might sleep in the barn. The farmer wouldn't hear of it. Instead, he ushered the holy man into his home. He sat the holy man at the head of the table, and fed him dinner with his family. He put the holy man to sleep in his own bed. And in the morning, he gave the holy man some food to carry with him.

As the holy man was leaving the house, the farmer stopped him.

"Please, would you do me the honor of blessing my family before you go?"

The holy man stood and stared for a minute. Then he nodded, and spoke. "Father dies, son dies, grandson dies." He turned and began to walk away.

The farmer was furious. "What kind of blessing is THAT?!"

The holy man shrugged. "Would you rather it happened another way?"

The farmer, dumbstruck, shook his head, and bowed in thanks as the holy man wandered off again.





My father would explain every time, that no, you would never want it another way. That one of the worst things that could happen to a human being was to deviate from that order. Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.

You never want to outlive your children.

This weekend, M and I learned that M's grandmother has cancer. She's having surgery as I type- removing a tumor the size of a football. This comes right on the heels of the word that M's grandfather has moved into hospice care, his Alzheimer's has become so advanced.

When we heard the news, I felt a wave of grief immediately. I know how rarely we get to see M's grandparents, and I may already have seen his grandfather for the last time. But I have always loved them. From the first time I met them, when M's grandpa made a joke, I don't even remember what it was, but it was friendly and kind and welcoming, and I was grateful to him for his thoughtfulness, welcoming me into his family. Well before M and I were engaged.

And M's grandmother. Mother of six, grandmother of nearly thirty, great-grandmother of six, in her eighth decade of life she has discovered she has a true talent for storytelling, and has been writing a history of sorts of the family. Each time we've all gathered together, she's read us all a new story, and they are beautiful and warm. I love sharing the bond of storytelling with her. I don't want to lose her from my life, let alone M's.

But M's grief took a different form.

"They've had a hard life," he said, "but it's been such a good one. They've never had to bury a child, or a grandchild... and I'm glad I could help give them that."

Since the first day of M's diagnosis, his biggest concern has been how his death would effect other people. How much it would hurt his sister, his parents, me, and now our children.

"Father dies, son dies, grandson dies," M said to me, and he managed a smile. "This is how it's supposed to happen. When you're very old, surrounded by people you love."

I think he might have even found it romantic, a little. I take that back. He definitely did.

Here's the thing- to M, I don't think there's any kind of romance greater than one that lasts a lifetime. That lasts until you're so old your body simply gives out, only you're together, you and the person you love.

Last summer we went to a wedding where the couple chose "The Luckiest," by Ben Folds as their processional.

They carefully planned not to include the last verse in their ceremony. I understand that. Any song that explicitly references death might not be appropriate for a wedding. But M hummed that last verse under his breath, squeezing my hand. Because he's that kind of romantic.

In the last verse of "The Luckiest," a couple gets married, lives into their 90s, and dies within a few days of each other. And that is the definition of true love that Ben Folds and my husband ascribe to.


I know M is comforted by the idea that he may lose both his grandparents instead of one, because it is important to him to know that they won't have to dedicate any more of their remaining days on this earth to grief than that.

For him, that is a tremendous comfort.

I often forget about other people. I often forget that M and I aren't our own little universe. I forget that there are other people who care about us. It's easier to forget, a lot of the time. It's easier to put little limits around your grief and your hope and pretend that nobody outside feels any of it.

But they do.

M is right. His death would have hurt people, will inevitably hurt people. And that he is alive isn't just a gift to me and his children and his parents. It is a gift to his grandparents. It is a gift to his friends. My friends. To everyone he hasn't yet met but whose life will be brightened by his presence. It is a gift. And he knows it.

How rare, to know that your life is truly a gift to others. And not in an egotistical way, no, in the profound language of grief and love and an understanding of the stark reality of life and death, M knows that his life has meaning for the people that love him.

M's little universe is much bigger than mine. Because he's fundamentally a better person than me. I've always known so. He only finds ways to remind me time and time again.

Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.

When somebody is ill, their family's should be scared, and sad. Because that is one of the greatest expressions of love we have, wanting to keep somebody with us. The way M and I, and M's aunts and uncles and cousins do. You can ask no more in life than to have the opportunity to cause somebody grief. You can ask no more in life than to be so well loved.

If you're the praying sort, or the sending-good-energy sort, or any of that, please keep M's grandparents in your thoughts. And please keep the rest of the family in your thoughts, too.

It's not so little a universe at all. It's all of ours.

With love and grief and hope enough for all of us to share.

M's grandparents

The Center of the Universe

Me and the center of my universe

Last week, M and I decided to (finally) take the plunge, and start watching Breaking Bad. (This post might have a few spoilers if you've never heard about the show before, but nothing big.)

Neither of us are generally the sort of person to get caught up in a cultural hype, we geek out about what we geek out about, and there's a lot of overlap for us. But we both feel a bit uncomfortable when everybody we know and everybody they know and everybody else seems to be obsessed with something new. Especially when it comes to TV. We don't want much television, so when we do we sort of want it to count. Well, now that Breaking Bad is of the air, now that it's over and we've distanced ourselves from the popular obsession, we decided it might be fun to watch just an episode and see what we thought.

Of course, we quickly learned it's pretty much impossible to watch the first episode of Breaking Bad and not immediately put on the next.

There's a lot on the show that makes us uncomfortable. Not the murder and drugs and gruesome comedy of errors regarding those things. No, what makes us uncomfortable is scenes like this.





I get a visceral fury whenever Skylar, Walter's wife, talks to Walter about his treatment. It's not about what he wants. It's about what she needs. I understand where she's coming from, sure, but she's going about it all wrong.

She's made up her mind what's going to happen to Walt, and he's going to do what she says because the alternative is to die.

I understand that. I do, I profoundly do. I see myself in Skylar a lot. But where we fundamentally differ is in how we address those same fears and needs. For me, M's cancer was always about him. It has always been about him, and his life, and his needs. I refused to believe he would die, but I tried to make sure he was feeling good about life as he lived it.

Whenever Skylar tries to bully Walter into a different treatment, or into a different doctor, or simply into her way of thinking, it comes across to me as cruel. She doesn't care if Walter's happy, so long as he's alive. Whereas Walter doesn't care if he's alive, so long as he's happy. Or at least, so long as he feels he has some direction and control over his destiny.

M and I watch these scenes snuggled up together on the bed, our hands gripped together and our breath shallow. Because these are real conversations that people really have when they know what they're facing.

I wonder if Brittany Maynard was a Breaking Bad fan.

When Walt's hair fell out during chemo, I wanted to punch Skylar in the face. She couldn't speak. She cried when she saw him bald- exactly as he had predicted. I remembered how I locked down my own feelings when M's hair started falling out and stayed cool, calm, and as relaxed as I could, helping him shave the patchy growth left on his head.

Because, as it seems I forgot in my grief and rage over Ms. Maynard, it's only about one person.

When somebody you love is in pain, is truly ill, you get over yourself and remember who really matters.

It's like this wonderful graph from the LA Times article- "How Not To Say The Wrong Thing."

The idea is the sick person is in the middle, and nobody is allowed to complain them about how their illness affects anyone else. That person can complain, or not, to anybody. All you give, from the outside in, is support.

I might have worried that M would die and I would never see my Happily Ever After with my One True Love, but M never heard that from me. Never. Because it's unfair and unkind. What could he do about it? Stop being sick?

No, M, was the center of the universe. He had to be. His universe was terrifying and it was collapsing. You never put more burdens on the person holding together the center of all existence. You just don't.

Skylar turns it on its head. No matter what Walter tries to do, she is critical. Who the hell wants that kind of person for a support structure?

Watching the show has been fun, so far. Lots of humor, meth related violence, and people saying, "Bitch!" with wild and conflicting inflections.

But we were not expecting to turn into a medical drama. Not hardly. And it's the side of medical dramas we don't particularly want to see. While M was on chemo, we watched House and Scrubs fanatically. We spend a few colder nights of our honeymoon watching Grey's Anatomy. We like the doctor side of things- doctors having fights and drama, and somehow coming out in the end to either cure the patient or to fail.

Watching Walter fall apart as the chemo ruins his body and his family's poorly concealed despair... that's not so much fun.

That's everything we never wanted.

We're still watching the show. Of course we are, it's too damned addictive.

But I have a renewed sympathy for the Maynard family. Actually, I'd like to offer her and her family an apology, for every bit of anger I harbored about her decision.

Nobody has the right, not me, to question Brittany Maynard. For her, she was the center of the universe. I'm so far outside the circles of contact and support, I don't even exist.

Me and the center of the universe

That's what I think I need to remember.

Dignity versus Nobility

It's been a long couple days in front of my computer.

Brittany Maynard chose to end her life on Saturday, surrounded by her loved ones. And as a result, I can't get away from the story.

It's all over facebook (although my friends and acquaintances thankfully have enough tact not to post it directly to my wall). It's all over the radio. It feels like it's everywhere.

A woman with the same brain cancer as my husband, three five years older than he was when he was diagnosed, and three years younger than he is now, ended her life in order to avoid suffering. When I say the same cancer, I mean THE SAME CANCER. The same size tumor. The same location. The same stage.

I've been cautious not to form much of an opinion. I've been careful to remind myself that she is not me, that she is not M, and that she was experiencing grief and fear and the desire to live a beautiful life in her own individual way.

I respect her choice, but as much as I sympathized with her and pitied her and wished for her to control her destiny to the best of her ability, it still enrages me now that she's gone. (Yes, I know, classic stages of grief.)

And here is why- it comes down to the word dignity.

To die with dignity.

I believe it is every person's right. But that word means many things.

M wanted, when he learned his diagnosis (but not his prognosis, mind you), to die with dignity. For him, that meant finding a medical trial to participate in. For him, that meant giving his death, not only his life, meaning.

He said over and over to me, he did not want to be defined by his brain cancer. He didn't want memorial funds in his name to raise funds for brain cancer research. He didn't want grey ribbons on all his friends' car bumpers, or 10Ks, or telethons. He wanted to be remembered for what he did, not what the cancer did to him.

He wanted to be remembered for his work on buildings that would stand for generations. He wanted to be remembered for his sense of humor and his brilliance. He didn't want to be forever associated with a disease. He didn't want to be Lou Gehrig.

He wanted to be himself, in control of himself. Just as Brittany Maynard did.

Only his idea of dying with dignity wasn't completing a bucket list of places to visit and things to see. It was saving other people. It was giving his death to other people, in the form of a medical trial. Of using his death to help understand the cancer, and perhaps keep other people from experiencing the same fate.

This contraption held his head down to a table for treatment.
The marks are for aiming the beams of radiation directly at the tumor.

At the time, the word that came to mind for me was noble. I thought he was unbearably noble. But he didn't see it that way.

For him, it was about dignity. About standing and facing his fate and making something better of it.

In a way, Brittany Maynard did the same thing. Her way of making something better of her death was to try to ensure that all other terminally ill people in the United States have the same option- the die before living is too painful to endure.

I know what kind of pain Brittany Maynard was facing. I know it. In one of her last statements, she said her helicopter flyover of the Grand Canyon was followed by her worst seizure yet.

Seizures are no joke. I know.

But dignity isn't just making sure you avoid pain. Dignity is prioritizing your humanity over your fear.

Yes, the right to die is incredibly important. And of course I have no way of knowing what options for treatment Brittany Maynard had. I don't know if a clinical trial was a possibility for her.

And as I've said a thousand times before, I don't believe that suicide is a selfish act. That Brittany was thinking of others is obvious to me, she made sure to say she hoped her husband would remarry and have children someday. She understood that life goes on for the loved ones of a dying person.

But at twenty nine years old, less than a year younger than me, I wish I could stare her in the eyes before she made the choice NOT to undergo any sort of treatment that would effect her quality of life for those last months, and ask her, "Who are you doing this for?"

I don't know if M's trial is saving any lives. I believe it could. I truly believe it could. It was dangerous, and it was frightening, but it worked.

And if it hadn't, doctors would know going forward what not to do, and why, when another terminally ill patient came along.

So maybe Brittany Maynard died with dignity. Maybe she did.

But maybe that kind of dignity isn't enough. Maybe, for me, death should be about more than dignity. It should be about more than avoiding suffering.

It should be about what you give the world with your life and death.

The OKO Tower, currently under construction in Moscow, and one of the projects M is most proud of.

When you're young, this is a much harder question. In your twenties, what do you really have to contribute to the wealth of human knowledge and understanding and beauty?

As you age though, you give more. You can't help it- living in of itself is giving.

My heart breaks for Brittany Maynard's family. Especially for her husband, who at least got to enjoy marrying the love of his life without the shadow of this prognosis and planned death over his head.

And I know that M is not typical. That his story is profoundly unique. But when I look at him, this man who at twenty four, the day after proposing to me, was diagnosed with the same brain cancer, and has since married and had three children...

I can't help but question the information Ms. Maynard was given. I can't help but question her motives. I can't help but question whether this wasn't about dying with dignity, but making a point.

And I would scream from the mountaintops to anyone else with a stage four, inoperable glioblastoma, "You can have more than dignity! You can be NOBLE!"

Maybe it's just from watching the man I love struggle always for what is best and most right for others, but I would always choose the latter.

Someday, the time may come when M is ready to choose to die. But I know him, and I know he would only ever make that choice if he thought living, under any circumstances, would give no more to the world than it would take from it.

M and his dad watching a pig race with the kids-
seven and a quarter years after being diagnosed with terminal, inoperable brain cancer.

I hope that is an equation that other people suffering from terminal illnesses can consider.



Edit:
In response to the question- what if *I* were diagnosed with a terminal, debilitating illness?
At this point in my life, if it were in fact the same glioblastoma, I might consider planning for a Brittany Maynard-esque death with dignity. Because the process of going through personality changes that might make me angry or even abusive towards my children is something they are not yet old enough to understand. My choice would be based on my desire to cause them the least amount of trauma- leaving them with memories of me intact. Again, the equation would be that living would give no more to the world than dying would take from it. But if faced with a similar illness before I had children or once they were old enough to understand the effects of diseases of the brain, my calculation would probably be different.

A Very Scary Story

It was a dark and stormy night. Lightning flashed in jagged arcs across the sky. Thunder shook the walls and rattled the windows.

In the attic of an old dark house, three children lay peacefully sleeping. Their mother slept in a room only feet away, dreaming peaceful dreams. Her last peaceful dreams. Her husband was gone for the weekend, away to drink and laugh with old friends in a cabin on the Maine coast. Fleetingly, she had worried that he might be walking into a classic Stephen King story, but this was the real world, she told herself. Horror stories aren't real.

The floorboards creaked as gale raged on, masking the sound of thousands of tiny feet, even closer than the hallway beyond the bedroom door.

Dawn broke, and she heard light footsteps rushing past. A chill ran down her spine, and she shivered. It's just the children, she said. They're going to wake up Grandmommy and Poppa. I can sleep a little more...

She woke lazily, with no idea of the terrors the night had wrought upon her.

She scratched her head, lamenting how rarely she showered these days, and thinking that it must be catching up with her in the form of worsened dandruff. I'll be sure to take a shower today, she thought, ominously.

She entered the guest bedroom and curled up with her three beautiful children. Her fingers played in their thick mops of long curls, and she pressed her cheek against theirs as they laughed and kissed her good morning.

Snuggled up against them on the floor, talking with Poppa about their plans for the day, when Grandmommy emerged from the shower.

Her shadow fell long and black upon the carpet. The mother felt her skin grow cold, and shivered again as she reached up to scratch her head once more.

"I have some bad news," Grandmommy said, and the mother felt her heart freeze in her chest. Somehow, she already knew.

"No!" she gasped, "Please! Don't say it! Please no!"

Grandmommy dropped to her knees, her face ashen. With a shaking hand, she extended a wadded
tissue.

And inside...

"AAAAIIIIIIIII!!!!!" The mother shrieked, her shock and fear immediately plummeting to the horror of resignation. "Please no! Please, I beg you!"

But there was nothing Grandmommy could do. The mother opened the kleenex, her own hands trembling, and saw...

Lice.

The three children, their gorgeous, thick ringlets bouncing ominous close, ran towards their mother.

"What's in the kleenex? What is it? What's in there?"

"NOOOOOO!" screamed the mother. "GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"It's too late," Grandmommy lamented, her cheeks hollow, "You've probably already got them too."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

In a frenzy, the mother ran to the store. Without hesitation she grabbed every box of NIX, every store
brand bug killing shampoo, stacks of combs, jars of mayonnaise, saran wrap... she stopped herself before adding lighter fluid to her heap.

She came home and stripped the bed. She stripped everything. Load after load after load of laundry, an ever growing mountain that she climbed with monstrous heaps of plus toys strapped to her back- a hopeless Sisyphus with itchy scalp.

She and Grandmommy shampooed the children, combed their gorgeous locks. Bug after bug tumbled out, caught by the sharp metal teeth of the combs.

Grandmommy smiled hopefully. "That should do it, right?"

But it was not to be. Day after day, the mother toiled. Picking nits, always picking nits. Changing sheets, spraying car seats and couches and tossing beloved toy after beloved toy into the hot dryer.

Grandmommy left, but the bugs remained.

Each time the mother thought she had finally rid her house of the pestilence, nits appeared. And the shampoo came out again, its acrid stench burning her nose and causing her heart to race in panic.

Grandma sent her and the children to a heat treatment salon, where they had their hair vacuumed and burned, and sent them home to boil their brushes and combs. And at last, the house seemed to return to normal. Finally, the bugs had gone.

OR HAD THEY?????

MWA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!


Happy Halloween!

The Routines of Bravery

On Monday, M and I went in for his regularly scheduled MRI and checkup with his neurooncology team.

In many ways, it was as routine as these visits can ever be. We talked more with M's doctor about her pregnancy than we did about M's condition. It's hard to explain, but sometimes you can't keep yourself from becoming friends in situations to like these. While we might not see M's medical team for dinners or playdates, we look forward to catching up on our lives together, to bumping into M's RN at synagogue, to squealing in delight at the not at all surprising news of new babies. We warned her, when she became M's doctor, she would get pregnant. We just have that effect on our physicians.

In many ways, it was anything but routine. Routine is what you do every day. It's dragging yourself out of bed to make breakfast and lunch and go to work or drive kids to school. It's brushing your teeth, and dodging calls from telemarketers and GOP surveys. It's rolling your eyes every time a bit of spam gets into your inbox after you've flagged it three times. It's that beautiful moment when you lay down on the bed and all at once your whole body tells you how hard it's worked today, and how incredibly amazingly blissfully pleasant it is to be horizontal.

It should never be routine to sit biting your nails for hours in the early morning while someone you love is getting sophisticated images taken of tumors that you can't help but worry are growing. Yet letting it become routine is a comfort. Telling yourself that one scan is no different than the dozens that came before makes the anxiety easier to bear. Telling yourself that you can adjust to anything, that anything can become normal and surviveable and commonplace is a necessity for existing beyond a trauma. Like astrocytoma.

This is life. And it is dreadful. And it is terrifying.
And it is so beautiful and wondrous and magnificent that every day we accept the terrors that come with continuing to live, regardless of what they may be.

For me, this week, the terror of "what if" was eclipsed by the other daily miseries I'd piled upon myself. My children brought home their own little nightmare, or rather hundreds of them, in the form of lice. Mice moved into my house. Our dishwasher broke. Our planned number of houseguests doubled as all air traffic in the area was downed. My doctor switched my medication to something that turned me into a comatose zombie. I planned and executed my twins' fifth birthday party. And for a swathe of it I parented solo while M took a much needed vacation with friends. And somewhere in there, I gave myself a little gift. The total hyperextension of my emotional energy. I could not find it in myself to worry until I was sitting in the waiting room, filling out the routine pre-MRI paperwork.

For me, this week, the beauty was watching my five year daughters exchange gifts they'd chosen for each other. It was watching as they let their two year old sister help them open their presents. It was five hours free to re-rearrange my kitchen from the affections of weeks of houseguests. It was hugs from little humans so sweet I didn't even care they might infect me with their pestilence. It was my mother-in-law beaming with motherly pride when she saw my first book, and my mother swapping apples with her grandchildren at the orchard, and the way M's belly presses against my back just right when he snuggles against me in bed, supporting my spine and warming me to my bones, and feeling his dimple in the air when he smiles in the dark.

These are not easy things to put to words. And nowhere is it harder to find a way than in the neurooncology ward.

I know how dreadful it is to be there. I know especially how dreadful it is to be new there. I remember our first visits so vividly, the fear and determination and guilt. The aura of hopelessness that surrounds some people, and the desire to simply look away- to not be contaminated.

When our visits began to feel routine, a woman named Shaneesha made them feel joyous. She knew us by name, she delighted in the growth of M's hair, in asking me about wedding planning, then honeymoon photos, and then pregnancy news. She was a patient services representative, and I looked forward to seeing her, to wasting the time of people in line behind us as I told her how ultrasounds had gone, or what we would do in New Zealand. Her last week at that job, we brought the twins in for the first time. She leapt over her desk, squealing with delight, and ran to them, and hugged them.

She made that terrifying place a home. And when she left, I decided I would try to do the same for another family just embarking on their brain cancer story.

Whenever we're at the cancer center, I talk loudly. I joke. I laugh. I talk to people, and smile.

So on Monday M and I made a minor scene, laughing and joking and smiling in the waiting room after hours of anxiety and MRIs, surrounded by quiet, fearful faces, and oxygen tanks on dollies, and colorful scarves and stubbly new hair. And when it was done we took the elevator down again from the top floor.

We shared the elevator with two people. A mother, steering a wheelchair in which her teenaged daughter sat.

Her daughter was bald, with a mostly healed scar running across her scalp. I'd guess as much as three months had passed since her surgery.

I recognized the swelling in her face, she was taking steroids, which meant she was probably starting radiation. Her eyebrows told me her chemotherapy was probably oral, as M's had been. Her bald head the result of the surgery and the radiation, rather than an IV.

The girl sat in her chair with dark, intelligent eyes forward. She did not look as M and I laughed our way onto the elevator. With M's hat on, with his head a full four feet above hers, she would never have seen the scar on his head that so closely matched hers.

She did not look at me, but I knew the look in her eyes. Directionless anger, mingled with hopeless fear, and the fear of hope.

Her mother smiled cautiously, and I knew her as well. Determinedly optimistic. Keeping a brave face. Brave out of necessity. Terrified, and helpless, with nothing to offer but love and support as she walked through this new world.

The girl clutched a cane covered in fluorescent patterns, and I remembered M's own cane. How much he hated it, but how as a man he could accept a cane as an accessory- we talked about getting him one with a carved snake or lion's head for a handle. For a teenaged girl, it's a much more difficult affectation, and I was impressed with her creativity.

"Is that washi tape?" I asked.
"Yes!" her mother said. She beamed at me. "We're going to change it, though. She says it's too bright for fall."
The girl rolled her eyes, and I saw the human inside her, the constantly embarrassed teenaged girl. I smiled at the mother.
"Totally. Are you thinking about something more Halloween-y? Skulls and crossbones or something?"
I hoped maybe the girl would smirk. I thought skulls were delightfully subversive.

Her mother gave me a look that broke my heart. It wasn't admonition, or humor, or solidarity. It was gratitude.

The elevator doors opened, and more people came in. People who weren't traveling through the world of neurooncology. Our conversation ceased.

Seven years, three months, and six days ago

But I stared at the girl, and her mother. I wanted so badly to speak, to say, "I know what you're going through," even if I don't.

"This is my husband," I wanted to say. "He was diagnosed with a stage four glioblastoma seven years ago."

I knew the other passengers, the ones from lower floors, they would be mortified. But I didn't want to embarrass the teenaged girl. Not in that way.

"He was diagnosed when he was 24," I wanted to say. "We'd been engaged for less than a day."

"I know how terrifying it is be young and have cancer."

"You're not defined by this, unless you want to be. And either is fine, so long as you make the most of the life you have. It can still be filled with happiness."

"We have three children now. Our twins just turned five. They're five years old, and we didn't conceive them until after a year of chemotherapy was over."

"It's going to be okay."

But I couldn't say any of those things.

I wanted to give the mother my card, link her to my blog, hope she would stumble on a post about M's cancer and feel a little more hope. Show her how unfathomably normal brain cancer can become. How the brave face is a comfortable part of the routine, and she's already halfway there.

I wanted to touch the girl. Just lay my hand on her shoulder. I know how people must avoid her gaze. Wheelchair bound, bald, and doomed, she must feel a pariah.

I do not know that girl's story, but I know by now she knows the language of brain cancer and its treatment. I know phrases like "GBM" and "clinical trials" are part of her vocabulary.

I wanted to tell her how many people, older, sicker people, live for years with late stage malignancies in their brains. How easy it is to find them on the internet, if you can get over your fear of the other stories you might find as well.

I wanted to tell her life is brutal and cold and cruel, and it is unfathomably beautiful, and generous, and good. And that's not a contradiction, it's a fact. And once you accept that in addition to the terror and the grief and the bitter unfairness of it, there is still so much to take away. So much to revel in. Especially when you know how fleeting and ephemeral it is in every aspect.

Instead I walked to the car.

M sighed and squeezed my hand. "I wanted to take off my hat," he said.

That was all.

But that brief sentence said so much more. It said, "I know how hard it is for you to see people you might be able to reach and help, in some other set of circumstances, and know it's probably best to do nothing. I know how much that girl got to you, how you felt for her and pitied her and and didn't pity her, and how complicated all those feelings are. I know how much you wanted to tell her mom it would be okay, and that being brave is so, so important, and that her daughter knows it and loves her and will never find the words to say how much it means to her that the people taking care of her stay so strong. And I feel it too."

That's why I fell in love so hard with that big, goofy, brilliant man. Because he knows me, and he shares the parts of me that make me feel the most human. And in his frequent moments of compassion and tenderness, I am humbled that he loves me.

I watched my husband wrestle with the emotions of empathy for a stranger, and loved him more. I knew the more I loved him, the more I needed our trips to stay routine. And I knew he understood they could not be forever. And my heart broke for him, a man living under a question mark. And his bravery only made me love him more. And so on.

I know that someday, one of our routine trips to the neurooncology suite of the cancer center, to the gleaming top floor, won't be smiles and hugs, pregnancy news and baby photos, loud jokes and silent solidarity.

One day, someday, probably, one of our routine trips is going to end in an elevator going down, and we won't have jokes to share. We will have hopeless fear, and directionless anger, and I will keep my back straight and smile casually and speak as though I don't feel them, because I will be the one being brave. I will be the one being strong, offering my unfailing support, again.

I will have to make different choices than seven years ago, when I had the luxury of blind faith that all would work out for us, the young, the romantic, the immortal.

Seven years, three months, and two days is a long time to live under a weight that turns the cancer clinic into a routine.

It's the span of my adulthood.
It's the blink of an eye.

I'm planning to bring M's doctor a baby gift when we next return, early this time, to ensure we see her before the baby arrives. The sort of hand crafted gift I give my dear friends. The dear friends who have seen you through the hardest times and always greet you with a smile, as though the hard times will never come again. But they will. We all know they will.

I will never be ready.

I am always ready.

I live in simultaneous hope and fear of the day I know exactly what to say to make a scared teenaged girl smile.

What It's Like To Be Suicidal #WorldSuicidePreventionDay #NationalSuicidePreventionWeek

There's a common myth that suicide is a coward's option. The "easy way out." That it's a selfish act, and that people who commit suicide are thoughtless and self absorbed.

The truth, as always, is much more complicated.

Because it's World Suicide Prevention Day, in the middle of National Suicide Prevention Week, let me tell you what it's like to be suicidal.

Life is more than hard, life is impossible. Your body hurts, and you neither know nor believe you'll ever know why. Your brain is foggy, and thick, and there's a haze in thinking that makes simple, mundane tasks feel impossible.

You see everything through a fog of self loathing, and you believe everyone else must see them that way too. You expect your friends to abandon you, because you are worthless and depressing and sap the joy out of life. As you alienate them, the grief that they must find you awful only fuels your depression.

You see yourself in only the worst possible terms, and when you're given a glimpse of your life through the lens of happiness or success, it brings all your misery into sharper relief. There are few things more painful than joy, when it becomes clear that you understand that which makes life living, and are simply denied the ability to experience it.

You believe you are a burden. Your constant sadness, your inability to complete tasks, your chronic complaining or resigned silences, the endless droop of your eyelids and the way you have to pause before smiling- to remember that it's an appropriate human response, you believe all of these things make you bad for other people. You believe your depression is infectious, and that your presence endangers people around you.

You believe that if you were dead, people would get over it. They would move on. Your parents, your friends, your spouse, your children... they would move on and have their own lives. Lives that would be richer without the constant strain of dealing with you.

You are scared of pain, and you are scared of death, but only a little. Your fear is absolutely nothing in comparison with the constant agony of living. The constant doubt and hatred and sadness. You begin to wonder what ways you could overcome your fear of death and take your life the most quickly, cause the least additional burden to your loved ones.

Men and boys, they tend to go for the sure-fire, foolproof death. Gunshots, hangings, jumping off bridges and cliffs.

Women, they generally go for the cleaner methods. Leave a corpse that just looks like a corpse, and spare their loved ones the trauma of cleaning up the bits, even if the death itself takes longer. They gas themselves in ovens or parked cars, overdose on medication, swallow bleach.

You spend weeks, months, years, debating what method to choose. You spend weeks, months, years, slowly building a plan- not because you're going to do it, but because it's a comfort. It's a comfort to know that when you truly can't bear life anymore, you know how to get out. The comfort becomes an addiction, and then an obsession.

You begin to give things away. To let your friends and family know that you love them, that they should never question that. That you love them more than you love yourself. You have no doubt this is true.

And then, finally, you snap. Frequently, it's joy that does it. It's a good day, a good party, a good dinner. Something really, truly good. And you think to yourself, "This is the last time I'm going to feel happy, ever again."

And you calmly begin to carry out your plan.

That is what it feels like to be suicidal.

I want to be perfectly clear- ALL of this. The feelings, the self loathing, the belief that you are bad and the world is bad and it will never be okay. the idea that you are hurting people you love simply by being alive, all of that...

All of that is a lie. It is all a lie that depression tells you, that a disease spreads through you. It is an illness, and it can be treated. It is not true.

Depression is an insidious disease. It masquerades as your own thoughts and emotions, but it's not. It's a tumor, sending out little metastasizing molecules and infecting your entire thought process. It's a self-detonating time bomb.

It is not your fault. Nobody goes out out looking for depression, but it finds you. It comes through windows in your experience. PTSD, RTS, panic disorders, chronic illnesses, a bad day. Depression is a disease that like to tag along with the other crap events that happen in life, and when it sets in, you tell yourself it's okay. You're not depressed, something happened and it's bumming you out, but you'll get over it.

Usually, you do.

Depression is like a germ. You can wash your hands and keep Purel on your desk, but sometimes, it will get inside. And you're not defective, you're sick. And there's help.

There is always help.

People with depression often don't go looking for help. They're too consumed with guilt and self loathing. When you hate yourself, you don't want to help yourself. And when you're ashamed of yourself, you want to punish yourself. The disease causes the symptoms, the symptoms perpetuate the disease.

Often the first cry for help is an experimental suicide attempt.

If somebody you know, seems depressed, there are things you can do. Ask them how they are. Let them know you care about them. You don't have to tell them you think they're depressed, just make an effort to talk. To keep the lines of communication open. Invite them out, and offer to spend an evening in. Be honest with them. If it becomes clear that yes, they are depressed, let them know you understand and you're willing to help.

If you are depressed, talk to your doctor. Talk to a therapist. Talk to a friend. If you find yourself fantasizing about suicide, call the National Suicide Hotline- 1.800.273.8255. It's open twenty four hours a day, every single day.

Know that yes, life moves on for other people. But it also moves on for you. You can survive, you can get better.

Like any chronic disease, there are flare ups. And these can be more dangerous than the original occurrence. Just like cancer, knowing you've beaten it once doesn't mean you can't beat it again, and there is no shame in its return. Just as you wouldn't blame a cancer survivor for a new tumor, don't blame yourself for your depression. It is beyond your control that your depression returned.

But you can get help again, and you can get better again.

Be well, everyone.

Be safe.

At A Loss for Words

"I'm gonna miss you."

A lot has happened this summer that I've had a hard time putting words to.

Several months ago, you, my lovely readers, helped me reach my fundraising goal for the Postpartum Progress Climb Out of the Darkness.

It was a strange experience, to be surrounded by women who have also survived PPD, with their husbands and children in tow, gleeful and motivated.

We didn't talk about our shared experiences. Nobody wants to drag those things up, to trigger anyone else's emotional distress. But it was there, silent, below the surface.

It made me feel a little naked for the truth of my experience to be so exposed.

The Chicago Climbers

So I didn't know what to say about it. And time after time, as I sat down to write about it, I couldn't find the words.

Today, the world lost a brilliant light. Robin Williams killed himself, another victim of depression lost their fight.

I knew Robin Williams had battled depression. I don't remember him talking about it explicitly, but I had seen enough interviews with him. I'd seen enough of his roles.

Depression, like any disease, has symptoms. And many times over the course of his iconic career those symptoms were visible. They were visible to me, somebody who didn't know him, but knew them. And they must have been visible to other people. So why didn't he get help?

The thing is, I know he did get help. You don't live to 63 without coming to terms with your disease, at least a couple times. But like any chronic condition, coming to terms with it a few times isn't enough. It's something you have to live with. To manage and control. Forever.

And when you're in the midst of what one might call a "flare up" if it were any other sort of disease, forever is too long. Forever is too goddamn long to bear.

How many times did Robin Williams spend an afternoon in the company of other people who had shared his disease, none of them talking about it?

I want to talk about it. I want all of us to talk about it.

Robin Williams had a disease. He was Bipolar, and with that comes depression.

If Robin Williams had been battling cancer all these years, what would we be saying now?

I ask myself those questions a lot. I have depression, and sometimes it flares up. Sometimes I get the fun-pack of flavors of depression. The postpartum, the manic, the situational, the biplar, and even the suicidal. It's a disease I may never be cured of, and I have to accept that. I have to be aware that when it flares up, and there is always that awful when, I will need to get help all over again.

I don't want to be the parent who kills themselves when my kids are in their twenties. I don't want to be the mom who straps her kids into the car and drives off a cliff. I don't want to be that person.

But that's what depression does. That's what it did to Robin Williams, who's career included some of the greatest of comedy and the greatest of drama my generation knows. Robin Williams, who made me cry in the Dead Poets Society, who made me cry in Hook, who made me laugh in Death to Smoochy and became the bedrock of my childhood in Aladdin.

Depression is real. It is a disease. As surely as cancer can kill if left untreated, so can depression.

And just as surely as cancer can be treated and beaten, so can depression.

I don't want us to look at Robin Williams as some sort of cautionary tale. As some sort of quitter, or failure, or somehow less than the sum of his incomparable accomplishments because this is how the story of his life ended.

Robin Williams was the victim of a disease that we need to take seriously.

And as the words, "Robin Williams was," start to sink in, I'll pop in "The Birdcage," and raise a glass to a man who fought a long fight, and lost.

As someday, we all will.

Just Fine

Three days before he asked me to marry him

I tell people M was diagnosed with cancer sixteen hours after we got engaged.

That's not really true. It was sixteen hours after we got engaged that he had the seizure that brought him to the ER, and from there to the CT scans, and from there to the MRI, and from there to the surgery that diagnosed him with brain cancer. The whole process from seizure to diagnosis took almost exactly five days. But from the moment I got the call that he'd had a seizure, part of me knew.

I'd been watching his symptoms develop slowly for the better part of a year. They were things you'd almost never notice. Things even his doctor, doing a neurological exam, didn't find in any way significant. But they were significant to him, in ways even he didn't really catch.

Eight months before the seizure: "I keep tweaking my left ankle when I run at night. I never used to do that. Isn't that weird?"
Six months before the seizure: "I used to play this song better, but the pick just won't stay in my fingers. Maybe I forgot how to play the guitar?"
Three months before the seizure: "I don't remember being so bad at base running! My left leg just won't quite do what I tell it to. I must really be out of practice."
And then, when I'd finally persuaded him to ask a doctor about it: "He thinks I probably just have a pinched nerve or something. I'll stretch more, and it'll be fine."

That was about two months before the seizure.

July is a big month for us. On July 4th, we got engaged. It was the one day we truly got to celebrated being engaged, even though it happened late in the evening.

On July 5th, M had his seizure. And we stopped celebrating being engaged and started going into emotional lockdown. Alternating denial and fear and a lot of figuring out how to fit both sets of our parents, who had never met, into our home so they could stay for the surgery.

And on July 10th, seven years ago today, the surgery. The endless awful hours of it, and then learning that M had stage four astrocytoma, an aggressive glioma that would likely take his life within two years.

It's much more comfortable to remember the other anniversaries.

May 23rd is a good one.

Yesterday, M had another MRI. As you may recall from a month ago, his last MRI wasn't exactly ideal. Instead of waiting our usual six months for a repeat, the doctor asked him back in eight weeks.

And if your math skills are functional, you'll note I said that he had another MRI yesterday. So what happened, right? Why did he have one in four weeks instead of eight?

Seizures. Seizures like he hasn't had in five years. An MRI that showed something and then seizures. Plural.

So his doctor wanted him back sooner, in case whatever that something was had started growing at an alarming pace. Or in case the last set of images had missed something. Or in case of any number of things, because after five years of having no seizures beyond the occasional micro focal seizure, that's alarming.

Here's the thing about seizures- everybody has what's called a "threshold." There's a point when the different things that can cause seizures- heat, medication, pressure, infection, blood sugar. fatigue- do. For everyone. People who get them regularly simply have a different balance of pressures already affecting their brains. And there are medications to manage them.

So yesterday we went back to the hospital to spend six hours getting MRIs and talking to the doctor.

And I'd like to say a very special couple of words to M's neurologist, who I love, and respect, and like personally as a human being.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???? Seriously- you sent in two med students to do the most in-depth neurological exam he's had in SIX YEARS while we sit around reading everything and anything into it? Were you getting a new baseline? Were you trying to teach them how brain tumors manifest? Were they supposed to be learning how to keep a straight face when they might be looking for signs of brain cancer?

M looked at the fourth year med student, who administered the rigorous tests while the first year student studied her. And I studied the first year student. What the hell does she know? What is going on? What the fuck is going on????

And then, finally, our beloved neurooncologist returned.

M's new scans were identical to the last. They were, to use the same word we've been hearing for six years, stable.

Bald from chemo and radiation, but totally handsome that way

You see, when M was diagnosed with an inoperable stage four brain cancer, we did everything the medical team knew how to do. And more. We did everything. And what they told us then was this:

This kind of brain cancer is never cured. You'll never be in remission. You'll never be all better. The best we can hope for is that nothing changes.

Because he could live a perfectly normal life with the symptoms he had. Because if there's a stable tumor in his brain, it's not actively hurting him. It's not growing. It's not killing him. It's not doing anything. It is stable.

But then, miracle of miracles, his scans weren't really stable. Instead, they got better. His neurooncologies, not the one he has now, but his first, beamed with joy and pride and accomplishment every time he saw a scan.

They weren't stable, they were improving. When you looked scan to scan, you couldn't see a difference. But when you looked over the course of years, they were better. M's tumors were continuing to die, or shrink, or do something that made them less visible on MRIs. And that was unprecedented. It was spectacular. It was beyond all hope.

Which brings us to now.

Now, for the last several scans, things had appeared identical. No change from scan to scan. But, as of last month, there is something. A tiny, minuscule shift that when viewed over years instead of months, shows those vague areas that used to be solid white in the MRIs becoming a little bit cloudier again.

So what the hell does that mean?

It could mean any number of things. It could be that scar tissue is starting to develop around the dead tumor. It could mean that yes, the tumor's not dead, and it's starting to recover from being irradiated and poisoned. It could mean nothing at all.

Because at this rate of change? Everything is still stable. Just in case, we're getting scans every three months instead of every six. That's something we can definitely live with.

M and M on the beach to watch our 6th 4th of July fireworks since getting engaged

And the seizures?

Turns out the medication M takes to balance the side effects from his anti-seizure meds... lower your seizure threshold. Other things that lower your seizure threshold? Stress. Lack of sleep. Anxiety.

Three things he's had in spades since last month, when his doctor saw something and we started wondering if maybe it was the sort of something we've tried not to think about for seven years.

So he's going off that medication that might have contributed to seizures, raising his dose of anti-seizure meds, and focusing on getting some decent sleep. Which is a much easier thing to do now that we know he's still stable.

And as I continued running through scenarios in my head of what we would do if M needed brain surgery in another couple years, or when it would likely be, or what it means that the area is still changing, albeit at a ridiculously slow pace, it hit me.

This? This is the opposite of how we survived.

The way we got through brain cancer when it hit us was pure and simple- confidence. We never doubted. Yes, the medicine was essential. Yes, without the arsenic trial this would have been a different story. But what kept us going through all that? Confidence.

We never hesitated. I told M what I told everything else. "You're going to beat this. You're going to be just fine. You're going to kick it's ass, and then it will be history."

I still believe that. I need to stop preparing for alternative scenarios. There are no alternative scenarios.

So what if, medically, nobody can say that M is "cured?" So what if his "stability" is no longer the unprecedented improvement of years past?

He's fine, and it's time to stop worrying. Time for me to stop worrying, and time for everyone else to stop as well. The worry hurts. It brings doubts. And with doubts come excuses.

The only thing changing from here on out is that M needs to make his health a higher priority. He needs to make the time to get to the gym, he needs to eat better, he needs to treat his body like it's the miraculous POA it is.

M's stable, and that's all we really need to know.

The whole fam-damily

I'm going to keep my eyes open for those other signs. For new symptoms he might not register but that I never miss. I'm going to keep logging events in the binder because that's important to do, and I'm going to keep asking questions when we see his neurooncologist.

Who gives a fuck if you're "never cured" when you have stage four astrocytoma? Who the fuck knows anyway?

M's as cured as it gets.

So no more worrying. No more doubting. No more stress.

When the anxiety comes creeping back, I'm going to tell it what I've always told it, and then leave it behind.

He's just fine.

Waiting

Our sixth anniversary, and I love this man more than the day I told him if he didn't propose to me I would do it first.

A few weeks ago, M and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. We flew to Santa Barbara for a friend's wedding, and romanced and danced and laughed and had so much fun I can't imagine cramming it into a single blog post. But I'm not writing about that today.

Celebrating love in a corner of paradise

Well, I am. Tangentially, anyway.

This past weekend, I went to Blog U- a crazy awesomesauce smorgasbord of networking, education, parties, constant mutual appreciation, and more alcohol than your average frat party. But I'm not writing about that today.

Getting to know some of my favorite bloggers

Or maybe only a little.

And when the whole thing was over, I went to an amazing lunch with my sister, who's friend's car was broken into and robbed of all my luggage- all my nice jewelry (anniversary presents, birthday presents, Christmas presents...), the shoes I wore on my wedding day, half my bras... But I'm not really writing about that today either.

Oh wedding Fluvogs... how I'll miss you.

This weekend was an insane high followed by an insane low, and that's what the wonderful people sending me photos they'd snapped of the jewelry that might appear in a Baltimore pawn shop kept saying.

Because yes, it feels very much like we don't do the middle in our family. Me and M, we only do highs and lows. We only do blacks and whites. We have no shades of grey.

At least, not usually.

The truth is, I thought that Blog U was my high after the awful low. For me, the terrible low was Wednesday through Friday, so of COURSE the weekend would be amazing, wouldn't it?

On Wednesday, as those of you who check in on me so often on Facebook know, M had his every-six-monthly MRI.

For the last seven years, we've been watching the pictures of M's brain change. Cloudy areas becoming clearer, contrasting areas shrinking, bright white shapes in a sea of gray fading away to a quietly benign nothing. At first the MRIs were every eight weeks, then every three months, and now- only twice a year.

And so on Wednesday we had our summer scan. And as M's doctor, who has only been with us for three of these, began describing the scans, we heard something we had never heard before.

Such a useless word, she used. "Something."

"Something" that probably meant "probably nothing." "Something" that meant "who the fuck knows what this means but it's there."

"Something" small enough that we weren't talking about getting back on chemo, we were talking about looking at the big picture in a new way.

M and I have talked many times about "when." This doctor, she likes "when." She thinks it's realistic. She says "when" the tumors start to grow again, not like it's some kind of death sentence, but as though it's an inevitability. And I respect that. Inevitable doesn't mean it's coming at you like a freight train, it means that someday, it WILL happen. The way that someday, you WILL get food poisoning. Or you WILL get trapped in the rain with no umbrella. Or you WILL put your foot in your mouth in front of somebody you respect and admire.

And I guess whenever we talked about "when," we assumed it would be nice and clear cut. "Oh look at that, the cancer is growing again. Time to get you back into radiation."

But it turns out this was utterly naive.

"When" means something different every day.

The doctor told us that, frankly, brain surgery is a whole different world now than it was seven years ago. Seven years ago, when M's brain surgeon decided not to remove his tumors, because it was just too dangerous.

"Now they've made these huge advances in mapping, and the techniques for brain surgery have completely changed," she said. "And so on Friday morning I'll be talking to the hospital tumor board about returning to surgery, to remove those tumors."

"Tumors beget tumors," she said. "And I'd like to get their opinion on whether or not it's time to go in and get them out."

So I stopped eating, at least when I was alone, and as much as I lied to my husband and to Grandma and to my parents, I worried.

Of course I fucking worried. And I deserve to worry. I am a human being, and it doesn't matter if it's my job to be somebody's emotional rock. My whole family's emotional rock. It doesn't matter if I know intellectually that this meant nothing and that there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it for days anyway. Of course I worried.

So I stood in the airport at the gate, calling and calling and calling M's doctor's office, asking if the tumor board had made a decision. Because I had to make a decision. If M was having brain surgery, I wasn't boarding that plane. I was turning around and going home to lock it down and take care of things until everything was better again.

And finally, the doctor's office called me back. "The tumor board agrees this is probably nothing, so we're going to hold off on surgery. Instead we're going to get him back for an MRI in eight weeks. Does that sound good?"

No, it does not sound good. What sounds good is somebody dropping confetti from the ceiling and a man with a giant check coming out and announcing that I've been victim to some sort of prank and now they're going to reimburse us the cost of the MRI, my plane ticket, the food I didn't eat, and half a million for my mental anguish. THAT sounds good.

But this didn't sound exactly bad, either. What it sounded like to me was... we wait.

Because that's exactly what it means. It means we're back to waiting.

And the reality is we're not "back to waiting," because we never STOPPED waiting. We just forgot we were doing it for a while. We got so used to checking in with our friends at the hospital, our neurooncology team, and asking about their kids and joking about their pregnancies and reminiscing about old times... that was our routine.

Not actually waiting for another shoe to drop. We were so happy and confident and comfortable that we forgot that's what we were supposed to be doing all along.

So I got on the plane and I went to Blog U, and I drank more than I have in the past five years, because I needed to fucking celebrate, damn it.

"He's going to be just fine."

I deserved to celebrate.

M was just fine, thank you very much, and I could stop worrying.

Only I can't, because that's how it goes. When you're waiting, you can't stop worrying. Waiting is always the worst part. Waiting lets all the fears grow, lets them take over if you give them the space.

And so at Blog U, I reminded myself what it's like to wait. REALLY wait. I read an excerpt from my book at an open mic, about waiting. And when I got to the end, I felt myself tearing up.

Not because, as so many people came up to me and asked, worried whether he would make it.

I cried because I needed to hear the words I spoke then, seven years ago, and I needed to say them to myself.

"He's going to be just fine."

We decided to get married, to have kids, because you can't live if you're just waiting. A holding pattern isn't a life.

We could all die at any minute. A plane could crash, a car could spin out of control, a meteor could fall from the sky. Anytime, any one of us, anywhere, could have an aneurysm and collapse on the street.

We are all living on borrowed time, every minute of every day.

So waiting? It changes nothing.

If somebody told me when I fell in love with M that he would die in five years, I wouldn't have walked away. If somebody told me on our wedding day that we'd have seven years of pure bliss, and then he'd be shot in a mugging gone wrong, I wouldn't have taken off my ring. If somebody told me when we were thinking about getting pregnant that our children would lose their father before they could reach elementary school...

Yes, I would cry my fucking eyes out.

But I wouldn't have changed my mind.

Six years, eight months, one week, two days ago

So I hope M will excuse me if over the next months and maybe years I get a little more misty eyed when I snap a few more photos than in months previous. I hope my friends will excuse me if I prioritize date nights a little higher than girls nights. I hope my family will excuse me if I cry a little more for absolutely no reason.

Nothing has changed.

It was just really easy to forget that when waiting was so easy.

Everything with us is highs and lows. Waiting- that's a low. But celebrating six years of marriage- and exactly one month after his doctor decided we needed to talk about "something," seven years of survival. Those are highs. Those are enormous highs.

The way he nuzzles my neck or teases me for screaming when he walks through door and says, "Hello," the way he dances like a maniac through the night... those are highs.

Those are the same highs we've had every day for six years, eleven months, and four days.

We just forgot that in those six years, eleven months, and four days there was all this waiting. All this exhausting awareness of the unknown. It's been there all along.

Nothing has changed.

He's going to be just fine.

Best Worst Weekend Ever

I'm a huge fan of Valentine's Day.

Wait- let me rephrase. I'm a huge fan of the day after Valentine's Day, when all the chocolates go on sale. As for the holiday itself?

Let's put it this way. I collect stuffed gorillas, and I love chocolate. So when I have an excuse to sort of make a thing out of it, I do.

I have a tendency to go really overboard with presents for M. Ever since our very first Valentine's Day, when I screen printed a hoodie for him with the phrase "Grover Hungry" on the front, and "Will Defenestrate Bohemians On Sight" on the back.

Shut up. It's funny.

At any rate, this year, I decided to go big. I don't mean just expensive, although frankly it was that too. I mean BIG. I bought my husband a new bed frame.

You're going to get a whole post this week on the details of this bed, I promise you that (and it has been a LONG time coming), but let's say I may have had a bit of an ulterior motive. You know, I get him a bed, and then spend the majority of the weekend... shall we say... in it.

M was also feeling romantic, I guess. Because he got me a collection of my favorite things. He sponsored me my own very real pet gorilla through the African Wildlife Fund (his name is Charles, and he's a Rwandan mountain gorilla!), gave me a big box of chocolates, and took me out for Ethiopian food.

Now, I love Ethiopian food. This seemed like the best Valentine's Day ever. But things went wrong starting the moment we opened the door.

Standing there, performing at about 80 decibels, was a trio of Rastas performing what I can only describe as "Lounge Reggae." They had a microphone, a Casio keyboard, and a tambourine. They sang (and I'm being generous with that description) about Jesus a lot, which was, you know, fine I guess, while M and I waited for our food. And waited. And waited. And waited. Every few minute a horrific screech of feedback would blare into the room, and I would scream and jump.

No, really.

The Lounge Reggae grew steadily louder, with increasingly more feedback, and finally our appetizers arrived. Only when I took a bite of my second sambusa, I discovered it was filled with beef, rather than lentils.

I sent the food back, and we prepared to leave and find another place to eat, when the Lounge Reggae suddenly stopped. "We were supposed to have a storyteller come tonight, but he didn't show up," the frontman declared. "But I know a story, I guess. It's called Plato's Cave."

I raised my eyebrows at M. Having been (briefly) a philosophy major, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the story the frontman Lounge Reggae Rasta related was not what Plato had intended, as I'm abut 99% positive the story doesn't end with the residents of the cave killing people for trying to tell them about Jesus. But by the time the story ended we were laughing our asses off, quietly I hope,

Artist Facsimile

Our food arrived and we thought we might finally enjoy a totally normal, albeit fast, dinner. When the frontman suddenly shouted, "Oh wait! I do know another story! It's about the time my car broke down on 394!"

And he proceeded to tell us about how his car broke down, and he had to walk down the freeway.

You'd be amazed how long somebody can tell a story about that to a slow, smooth, Reggae beat.

"And then I was chased by bats! And wild dogs! And bees! And then came the spaceships."

Mike and I stared at each other. Surely, this must be a joke.

But no, the story went on. All about the spaceships saving him from the bats. And the wild dogs. And the bees.

And then the Rastas finished the night by singing us a song about the return of the mothership.

At this point our parking had long expired, so Mike and I paid and made a dash for it. But our car hadn't even reached Lake Shore Drive when I started feel queasy. And before we were halfway home, I had begged off our favorite ice cream parlor, so we could just go to bed early.

And not in a fun way.

I crawled into bed and went straight to sleep, at quarter to ten. Which is kind of awesome when you've got three small children, but...

Then I woke up in the morning, nibbled on a piece of toast, and hopped into the car to go to my audition.

Yeah, you heard me right. Audition.

As I belched up increasingly more horrific flavor combinations, I quietly prayed that I would make it through my piece before feeling the full wrath of whatever was happening in my gut. I gritted my teeth and put on a smile, and I performed my piece as best I could, before zipping home and straight back into bed, where I passed out again the moment my head hit the pillow.

I was awoken an hour later by the overwhelming need to spend forty five minutes being sick in the bathroom.

And that was how I spent the rest of the weekend. A few minutes in bed, resting, half an hour in the bathroom, crying.

I still haven't touched my box of chocolates. But I guess I got my wish. I spent basically my whole Valentine's Day weekend in bed.

However, today I can tell you that I KILLED IT in the audition! I'm happy to announce I will be performing in Listen To Your Mother!!!!!!

That's right- if you enjoy the blog but you're fed up with all that pesky reading, THIS is the show for you!

May 4th, here in Chicago at the Athenium Theater! I'll be sure to post a link to buy tickets as soon as it's available. But for now- mark your calendars!!!!

To celebrate, I'm going to bust open some of that chocolate.

See you in May!