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.
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.
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.
People like to joke that once you have kids, you stop having sex.
Obviously this isn't true, or there would be no such thing as younger siblings or vasectomy parties. (Yes, I contemplated throwing my husband a party to commemorate his vasectomy. I am certain this is actually a thing people do, and I'm not just a lunatic. There are menses parties, for god's sake!) I sometimes think this is a myth created by people who just don't want to imagine that their parents actually had sex for pleasure on a regular basis.
Movies like "Date Night" perpetuate this myth, with such hilarious scenes as the mouthguard incident, or the look of shock on Tina Fey's face when her friend says she's getting divorced in part because she and her husband were only having sex two or three times a week. And yeah, I laughed my ass off, because I'd recently had twins and my husband and I were living in shifts in order to take care of two sets of dirty diapers and whatnot 24 hours a day, and yeah, we weren't having sex every night. But judging all of parenthood by the first six weeks is like judging all baseball teams by the Cubs, or judging all of "Up" by the first ten minutes.
So I'm going to set the record straight.
Sex is a minefield at first. First off, there's the awkwardness factor of attempting to move in concert with another person in such a way that both of you can avoid making strange and humiliating noises (and not just with your mouths) and trying to look sexy while you do it. Then there's the goodie-bag of body issues most of us go into sexual relationships with, making things just that much harder by necessitating a completely dark or poorly lit sex environment. On top of that, there's shame based indoctrination, that tells men they're never big enough and they don't "last long enough," and tells women they should be capable of half a dozen orgasms pretty much all on their own with no help, or that they're not really supposed to like sex to begin with, depending on their cultural backgrounds.
Basically, until you get comfortable with your partner, sex is kind of... awful.
That's not to say it doesn't still feel great. Because let's be honest, most of the time it does. But parts of it are embarrassing and confusing and involve lots of talks about what it all means, and whether you're having enough of it, and you avoid the conversations that might actually make it better.
After kids? Forget all of that. Sex is completely different. Why?
Because you have completely lost all sense of shame or embarrassment towards your body and what it does. The fears you used to have about whether or not he'll stop liking you if he notices your fat stomach are replaced by the knowledge that this person has watched you screaming in pain while you carried multiple human beings around inside of you, with random parts swelling up and growing hair no human should grow and with that wild hormonal glint in your eyes that threatens actual physical violence, and you know what? They still love you!
So fuck it!
Once the realization that your partner loves your body and what it does, regardless of what you think of it, really hits?
The sex is incomparably better. You can simply ask for what you like. You can explore your fetishes and kinks and preferences, even the ones that previously embarrassed you, because nothing embarrasses you anymore. Not when you've both sat staring at each other at the crack of dawn, covered in the same infant's vomit and feces. Not when you've had more conversations than you care to count about the kids' diarrhea and whether or not the shits you're both experiencing indicate a virus, something psychosomatic, or yet another side effect of prolonged fatigue. Not when you've been responsible for popping each others' back pimples, harping on each other to get to the gym, and sitting on the couch after the children are FINALLY asleep, each eating your own entire pint of Ben and Jerry's. Once you hit that point, the sex is epic.
And that makes people feel icky. To know that their birth heralded in a new and exciting era in boning for their parents is beyond uncomfortable.
So stop making it about them already, and make it about you.
All that said, there are still some deep truths when it comes to the levels of exhaustion a couple with children experiences come the end of the day. There is nothing quite like going to bed utterly exhausted and already covered in four people's fluids to make you NOT want to be covered in another variety.
There are levels of bone weary tired that only appear when a kid woke you up at three in the morning the night before because they had a hangnail, and then another woke you up at dawn because you promised they could have scrambled eggs for breakfast. SCRAMBLED EGGS. It's not like you need an extra hour to prepare them, for God's sake! Followed by a whole day of wrangling into carseats, evacuating from car seats, pushing around loaded strollers while doling out snacks and keeping tabs on space cadet kids who forget to follow you in the middle of a park because they thought they heard a dog somewhere.
That kind of exhaustion comes only with having children or providing instructions to astronauts in a busted space ship for what to do to keep their air breathable until they can make their descent back through Earth's atmosphere.
So when it comes to post child sex, there are really two varieties, and for your reading pleasure I will sum them up to you with the following entirely theoretical definitely not real certainly not from me and M conversations:
"Hey, remember that thing you did the other night that made me see God while I was orgasming? Can you do that again, only this time can I be blindfolded and can you use some ice?" "Sure! Only you have to promise that tomorrow you'll do that other thing. Twice. And I want you to wear that thing we got on Valentine's Day while you do it the second time." "Do we have to wait until tomorrow? Can we do it now?" "Yes please!" "I'm so horny. But I'm soooooooo tiiiiiiiired." "If you decide you're more horny than tired, I can rally." "You can rally? Okay... these pajama pants have a hole in the crotch. How about I just lie here and you make this happen through the hole in my pants, and we call it a night?" "I'm not doing that." "Probably for the best. That would make the laundry extra gross." "snooooore"
So the truth is that it's inconsistent. Like almost everything in life. But it's not the sad, exhausted, infrequent joke it's made out to be.
Which is why vasectomy parties should totally be a thing.
Go get your freak on, people with kids. You have more than earned it.
I used to couch that in parenthetical exceptions, but about ten months ago I had to stop. When M and I got married, we were very careful in our ring selection. We went to the trouble of making sure not only that we got rhodium plated rings, but that we returned to the store every six months without fail to have them re-plated.
Sadly, no amount of re-plating could stop the inevitable. After five years of wearing my wedding band, never taking it off save for MRIs or those weird days we'd take to visit the 'burbs and replate the sucker, the hives began coming.
Skin allergies suck. First comes the vague itching. Then comes the blotchy redness. Then comes the open, festering, pussy wounds on your skin. Not pleasant, I know.
So after five years of marriage, I took off my wedding ring.
I hated it. I hated not wearing it. For the first few months if I went to an occasional wedding or special event, I'd put it back on. But even that became unbearable.
And so, M and I planned to replace it with something I could wear. Lucky us, we live in a city filled with brilliant artists and craftsmen, and we located a local shop, less than a mile from our first home together and only two miles from the site of our wedding. In the converted warehouse, a small group of brilliant odd-balls make beautiful rings from reclaimed wood.
For our sixth anniversary, we got new wedding rings. They're made from old xylophone tiles, and mine has a band of crushed lapis lazuli, which makes it resemble my old wedding and engagement rings, stacked together.
We didn't have a dedication ceremony, or officially renew our vows, or anything like that. But it seemed odd to just pick up a new wedding ring, put it on, and say, "That's that!" So when we picked up the rings, we took a moment to commit ourselves all over again to our marriage.
M smiled his awkward, off kilter smile, and slid the ring onto my finger. "I love you more today than every day before. I can't imagine loving you more, but I know tomorrow I will, and I want to do that for the rest of our lives."
I'd rehearsed in my head exactly what I would say, knowing that one of the few times M never jokes is when he's telling me how much he loves me. So I cleared my throat, grinned at him, and slid the ring onto his finger.
"Six down, twenty to go."
He laughed and we kissed, and the lady behind the counter smiled and said we were adorable, but didn't ask for an explanation about that vow.
When M and I were engaged, we only really got to enjoy the experience for about sixteen hours. The rest of our engagement was totally eclipsed by M's health.
As our wedding date neared, M and I were driving home one afternoon when he said something that I will never forget.
"I have a new goal. I want to spend more of my life married to you than not. I want to live long enough that more of my life was as your husband than before."
He was 25 and a half years old.
For our anniversary, we put on our new rings, and flew to Santa Barbara for a friend's wedding. We extended our trip a few days, so we could spend our anniversary languidly driving up Highway 1, admiring the views of the mountains and the ocean, eating at surfer dives and buying strawberries at the side of the road. I hardly took any pictures. I was too busy feeling overwhelmed by joy, and love.
While we lounged around, without agenda or worry in beautiful Santa Barbara, life was very much as it was for us on our two week honeymoon in New Zealand. We took long walks. We ate local food. I bought some clothes. I made California Benedicts for breakfast.
At the wedding, we danced until our legs gave out, and the next day we came home to our three beautiful children.
It wasn't quite a second honeymoon. It wasn't quite a vow renewal. It was us, together, as we always are.
When I was young, I was certain I'd never marry. I didn't have boyfriends- though I sometimes referred to my beaus that way for my parents' sake. I thought the whole idea of monogamy and sexual fidelity was hogwash. I thought that committing yourself to feel the same way about the same person for the rest of your life was insane. I thought true love was something they fed you in fairy tales to keep you eager, but the reality was you do what you do to be happy, that being happy is what's most important in life, and that marriage didn't have anything to do with that.
Then I met M. And I fell in love. The idea of agreeing to be "boyfriend and girlfriend" didn't bother me. The idea of complacency and simplicity in terms and arrangements seemed soothing, and easy.
And with M, it is.
I've been married to the love of my life for more than six years, and in many ways they have just flown by.
But I read occasional blog posts about how marriage is work, how marriage is supposed to be work, how marriage isn't based on love. I hear my friends' tales of domestic discord and frustrations, of divorce and disillusionment, and I listen.
I sympathize.
But I do not understand. I do not understand why anyone would put themselves through it, deny themselves more opportunities for love and joy by staying in a relationship that brings them neither. I understand that for some people, marriage is work. But it's not for us. It never has been for us.
I know, in many ways, we are a unique couple. For most people, anniversaries and birthdays don't come with a looming counter. "Six down, twenty to go," is not a thought that accompanies these happy occasions. Each time M has a birthday, we don't just celebrate his birth, we celebrate his survival. Each time we have an anniversary, we're not just celebrating our marriage, we're celebrating the perseverance of life itself.
It's not that our lives have been easy. Far from it. Cancer is hard. Unemployment is hard. Newborn twins are hard. Going to college with two toddlers and pregnant with baby number three is hard. Hell, twin toddlers while pregnant is hard enough by itself. Three under three is hard.
Life is hard. And parenting is hard.
First day as parents
And we didn't have much experience with marriage before kids. On our first anniversary we were already 16weeks pregnant with our twins. And that was hard. But our marriage has always been easy.
I don't know that I'd recommend doing things our way, but I do know that I have long since stopped giving marriage advice. Relationship advice, sure, but marriage? Never.
Are we perversely blessed in our perspective? I don't think so. I honestly don't think that the love we consistently share, that constantly grows, that effortlessly brings us immeasurable joy and laughter and happiness is based on a fear of death. That only sharpens it around the edges a little.
I know that our love has never faltered. That the only real strain our marriage has ever suffered was depression, which was less a strain to our marriage than one of us battling a disease. And neither of us have ever faulted the other for their illnesses.
The last six years have gone past so quickly I still think of us as newlyweds. When I think of our relationship, it's in the giddy, excited, heart pounding terms of never wanting to stop touching his skin, or melting into his arms while he kisses me, or laughing as we run like teenagers down the hall to the bedroom. When I think of my love for M, it still comes with a hint of fear that one day he'll realize I'm not good enough for him, that I'm lazy and fat and unshowered and he deserves so much more than me- and rather than feeling depressed by such thoughts I feel inspired to impress him, to show him how competent I can be, how beautiful I can be, how brilliant I can be, until I surprise myself by becoming better than I ever knew I could.
He surprises me and inspires me. He makes me want to be more than I am. He makes me want not just to drop that extra twenty or thirty pounds, but to embrace myself and my body as I am, and love myself as much as he loves me.
He makes me feel like maybe I do deserve somebody so wonderful.
And that has never faltered. That has always been effortless. That has always been simply M- simply the way of the world- simply us.
The Captain Hammer Yin to my Ani Yang
Since getting married, we have grown together. I know more of his flaws and his faults, but my love only grows.
When people tell me that marriage is work, I nod. But secretly I wonder if maybe they're not doing it... wrong.
When people tell me that marriage is hard, I shrug. But secretly I wonder if maybe M and I are just... soul mates. Perfectly matched. Bound by the bonds of "True Love" in the Princess Bride sense of the words.
Maybe we're not. At six years married, with three children, I still feel like a newbie. I still feel like a newlywed. I still feel young and invigorated by our marriage.
I hope to still feel that way when we've been married for sixty years.
And I still believe what I thought before was true- marriage isn't the best idea we as a human race have ever concocted. Forever is a long time to work on something hard. And maybe, for some people, that's the point. Maybe, for some people, the hard work is what gives it meaning.
For me, the meaning is the constant joy and love. The effortless happiness we bring each other. The sharing of burdens until they're lessened almost to nothing, and the sharing of joy until it's multiplied to infinity.
We've been married longer than I've lived in any home. We've been married longer than many of my friendships have lasted. We've been married longer than I had any right to hope on our wedding day. I don't know how I'll feel then, but now I believe another twenty years won't be nearly long enough.
Six years ago this month, my amazing husband-to-be completed a Herculean task.
He burned hundreds of CDs, and labeled them all with individualized labels. Those labels had the names and tables (named for our favorite restaurants) of every guest at our wedding.
Very few of these songs were explicitly "mine" or "his." They are really, fundamentally, all "our songs." When you're as obsessed with mix tapes as I am (and I'm very surprised if you haven't noticed by now how seriously I take them), you don't marry somebody who doesn't take their music just as seriously. You marry somebody who's just as dedicated to the perfect song choices, the perfect order, the perfect MIX.
So what was on the CD?
For this week's Twisted Mix Tape Tuesday I present to you, without further comment, our wedding CD.
When M and I started dating, he made a huge effort not to eat meat in front of me. I thought this was adorable but misguided- my objection has never been to seeing meat.
As things got more serious he got more comfortable ordering a steak on our dates, or eating a burger in the car on long trips. We never teased each other about it. He never waved bacon in front of me, joking about delicious delicious dead pig. I never squealed, "Mother! Where are you mother?" when he bit into venison jerky.
We respected each others' choices when it came to our diets. I had been raised since birth as a vegetarian, and he had been raised in a very American meat-and-potatoes environment. And we were both comfortable with our own choices.
For our last dating anniversary before our wedding, I made him lamb. I'd never cooked any kind of meat before, and I wanted to make some sort of grand gesture. I did a lot of research, too. I chose the kind of meat, not for ethical reasons, but because I was confident I would be able to prepare it without killing him.
And now here we are. I cook meat regularly, for him, and never taste it. And no, I never have the impulse to taste it.
Sometimes, at our dinner table, the children eye daddy's food curiously. They rarely ask about it. But that is starting to change.
I remember how old I was when my classmates started making fun of my diet. I was about five years old. I always assumed it would be around that age, for similar reasons, that my children would question their diets as well.
Turns out, I was wrong.
The other day we sat down to dinner. It was a rough day, so we ordered in Thai food. M had chicken pad thai, the girls had tofu pad thai. Everyone was eating happily until SI, the never-ending fount of questions with no answer, asked why daddy was eating from a different container.
"Daddy's pad thai noodles have chicken in them. Yours have tofu."
I watched her try to wrap her head around this. She's long known that daddy eats animals. But recently she's been very interested in the nutritional content of things. She knows she can't have ice cream every day, because it's made of fat and sugar. She knows that fruits and vegetables are nutritious, she knows that protein is important.
"Is chicken nutritious?"
"Well," I answered, "it's got lots of protein."
"But does it have fat and sugar?"
"It has some fat, not as much as red meat."
M piped in here, cautiously. "Like steak or burgers. Those are red meat, and they have much more fat."
"Why don't you eat meat, mommy?"
"I'm a vegetarian."
"What's a vegetan... why?
I hesitated for moment, and threw a quick apologetic glance to M. "I don't eat meat because I think it's wasteful."
SI nearly dropped her fork at this. "Wasteful" is a word she believed she understood, completely. She and DD love to play the "wasteful" game in the car, where they come up with examples of things that are "wasteful," and generally these things involve throwing food into the mud. Eating food is wasteful? This made no sense at all.
"You see, sweetheart, a long time ago, people had a hard time finding all the food they needed to have nutritious meals. It was hard to find sugar, and fat, and also protein. But if you killed an animal and ate it, you could have protein for a long long time.
"Do you remember the Buffalo Woman book? People used to eat meat like the Native Americans in that book- they would kill one buffalo and use every single part of the meat to feed their family for a long time. They didn't have to kill very many. Each buffalo had enough meat to feed the family for months.
And they used every part! They used its bones, and its eyes, and its skin, and its teeth, and its horns, and even its bladder! They didn't waste any of it. They were very respectful of the buffalo they killed to get protein in their food.
But now that's not how people get their meat. Instead of killing one animal and using all the parts, they kill lots and lots and lots of them, and only use a few parts. And a lot of the other parts just get thrown away. Sometimes the whole animal just gets thrown away. And that's not respectful at all."
She frowned at M's plate. "So why do you still eat it, daddy?"
And there it was. The question I never asked him. Because his diet is his choice, and the last thing I ever wanted to do was guilt trip him over it. His eyes widened in a guilty panic. I started talking again.
"Daddy eats meat because protein is an important part of his diet, and meat is one of the easiest ways to get lots of protein."
"Even though it's wasteful?"
M sighed. "Even though it's wasteful."
"Everyone has to make a choice about their food," I added. "Daddy chooses to eat meat because the protein is important to him. I choose not to, because I don't want to kill animals unless we need to. But it's up to you to choose whether you want to eat meat or not."
"I don't want to waste animals," she said. "I'm a vegetarian too."
"Me too!" said DD.
"Me doo!" said RH, with a mouth full of noodles. And like that, the conversation was over.
As soon as the kids went to bed, M and I apologized to each other a dozen times. Him, for not having any answers for the kids. Me, for possibly shaming him about his food. Something I never wanted to do.
I expect our family will talk about this again. Probably lots of times. And in the meantime, M can figure out what he's going to tell the kids about his dietary choices, and his reasoning for them.
And I can keep figuring out ways around conversations about our food industrial complex and the ethical treatment of animals. I'm not eager to talk to my kids about the unpleasant things we do to animals in captivity. And I'm fairly confident that my children will continue to choose not to eat food that is wasteful, and inhumane.
If we lived somewhere where it was feasible for us to buy meat from a family farm, where we could visit the animals, maybe even pick out our own cow before slaughter, things would be a little different. If we bought a whole cow, bones and organs and all, rather than just the bits and pieces that make the act of killing seem sanitary and mundane, it would be a different story. And the girls and I can have that conversation whenever they want.
But the most important thing is that our children know what their food is, and where it comes from.
They know that ice cream is fat and sugar, with no nutritional value. And they know sometimes it's okay to eat that.
And they also know that meat is a dead animal, that people eat. And that can be okay too.
They know what waste is, and that it's a bad thing.
I'm pretty confident they'll make good food choices so long as they remember those guidelines. And really, giving them guidelines and sending them into the world to make their own choices?
Today is yet another in a long list of days I don't know how to feel about.
I've been thinking about cancer a lot. Not just because I'm editing the hell out of my book. Not just because I'm due for another skin check. Not just because of M's last MRI and the frank shock of the new neuro-oncology interns. Not just because friends and loved ones keep getting that diagnosis, keep hearing expiration dates and time tables and the sort of heart wrenching news you can never un-hear.
Although it's also that.
The thing that's had me thinking the most about cancer is what happens to my family next month.
Next month marks five years, five whole years, since M ended all of his treatment for his stage four brain cancer.
Not that it matters what stage it was. Not that it matters where it was. No, as soon as the word "cancer" appears in your medical files, things change. Things change in ways you would never expect, and ways that never would have mattered.
Next month, for the first time since we got engaged, my husband will be eligible to buy life insurance again.
Just think about that. Think about knowing every day that you're on borrowed time, that you are supposed to die. That you're supposed to be living each day like it was your last, fast and hard and with dignity and beauty.
And then imagine that instead of bungee jumping and traveling to Prague, the things that make you happiest, give your life the most meaning, are building a family.
For five years he's been living without a net.
I'm going to be honest, I haven't missed life insurance. I was so happy to have M alive and well that I didn't
give a damn about cashing in on his corpse. But that's not really what it's about. Life insurance is about dignity for the bereaved.
If he had died during these last five years, the girls and I would have been left with nothing. Scrambling to pay his final bills, to afford somewhere for his remains to rest. I would have had to hold off mourning, to start scouting apartment listings and "Help Wanted" ads, to put our home on the market and prepare to move my children away from everything they'd ever known.
I thought about it once in a while, and it scared the crap out of me. But next month, my husband can get life insurance again.
He'll no doubt have to pay through the nose for it, but he can get it.
And yes, I understand why a life insurance company wouldn't want to touch him, to bet on his life.
But each time I thought about it, my skin would crawl. As though it weren't bad enough to worry. As though it weren't bad enough to wonder.
Cancer takes things you never knew you had. Cancer takes things you never knew you cared about.
Today is World Cancer Day, and I'm grateful that next month my husband goes from being a risk to being a survivor in somebody else's eyes.
Today is World Cancer Day, and he is one of the lucky ones. Unfathomably lucky. But there are so many more people in the world, and there are so many days in the year, and there are so many kinds of cancer.
There are so many kinds of fear.
I don't know how you're celebrating this day, but I know how I am. I'm making my husband a banana pudding pie with graham cracker crust- the same dessert I made him every week of chemo for over a year. We haven't eaten it since, but today it seems appropriate. Maybe, almost five years later, it can just be a dessert again.
Maybe being able to just enjoy some pudding is another thing cancer took away from us.
But like life insurance, I'd like to think it's something we can take back again.
So in honor a World Cancer Day, a few hopes for things we can reclaim:
Our peace of mind.
Our financial security.
Our love of pudding for the sake of pudding.
Our ability to say "forever" without doubting ourselves.
Our life stories.
Five years of uncertainty.
Happy World Cancer Day, everyone. And here's to many, many, many more.
She had a bike accident. After a few days, she started getting migraines. Then she had a massive stroke that nearly killed her.
Forget it- don't read what I have to say about it. Watch these videos her husband made, just make sure you've got a box of kleenex.
She's had an amazing recovery. After months in the hospital and months of rehab, she's finally home.
For her birthday, her friends and family came together to do something amazing- to raise money to pay for her medical bills. Local businesses, old clients, friends, and family members donated dozens of baskets that they auctioned off to raise funds for the expenses.
The auction was at a massive "I Heart Kate" celebration, at the same venue where Kate and Chris were married five years ago. A friend spent the evening screen printing "I Heart Kate" t-shirts to help raise even more funds.
There was live music, spectacular tamales, more brownies than you could shake a stick at, a photo booth, and something truly incredible. One of Chris and Kate's favorite bands- Mae- featured prominently at their wedding. They used Mae songs for both the ceremony and the reception.
Chris reached out to the Dave Elkins, the lead singer and guitarist, and Dave Elkins came all the way to Illinois to play at the event.
It was amazing.
That wasn't all, though. It was also Kate's birthday. And when you've spent half your summer with a trach in your throat, when it seemed for a while you might never see another birthday candle, blowing out more than thirty candles on one cake? That is one gigantic, incredible, inspirational victory.
It was an emotional evening.
That said, Kate's family isn't out of the red yet. There are so many bills, and they do keep coming. To help the family, you can buy I Heart Kate t-shirts- like so, modeled by Chris:
Also- voting for Blogger Idol is live! I've written a very personal piece about my own fears when I thought the person I loved might not come Please vote for me! Thank you again. :)
M has lots of friends from his childhood. Whenever we go to Minnesota, we invariably make the time to meet up with his group of buddies from high school. They're awesome people. I like all of them. Really, all of them.
They're doing pretty much what we're doing. There are some four or five kids (not our own) involved in the brood, most of them are married, they almost all still live in the same metro area.
My friends from high school?
To be honest, I don't really have friends from high school.
Me on the left, Aunt Marla on the right circa 2001
That's because I didn't exactly go to high school. I was in high school for one year, and then I moved on to the greener pastures of college.
And back in those days, I hung around with a questionable crowd. And I mean very questionable. I'm not saying that they're bad people, or they were bad people, I'm just saying that now, with the gift of hindsight, I would have been a pretty nervous parent if my fifteen year old was hanging out with thirty year old college dropouts at Rocky Horror Picture Show rehearsal.
When I was a teenager, my friends ranged in age from my younger sister's grade to pushing forty. It wasn't that they were creepy older men (well, some of them were), it was that we had similar interests. We had engaging conversations about philosophy. sociology, law, art... we liked the same music and went to the same parties. The friends I had nearest in age were either high school and college dropouts, or recent grads from different high schools in town. I only ever met half a dozen of their parents, and they took turns being homeless and living in the attic of my parents' garage.
And so, I don't have that sort of nuclear group, that big group of friends who are all growing up together, getting married together, having kids together.
Aunt Marla getting married
Whenever I go back to my old hometown in Michigan, I don't see many friends. I only have two or three friends back there who I really kept up with, who I really want to take the time to see. And they aren't now nor have they ever been friends with each other.
My friends scattered to the winds, and really, I'm happy for all of them.
But I never see them. Uncle Brony moved to the southwest for flight school, and now lives in San Francisco where I think he's becoming a yoga instructor. Aunt Marla stayed in our old town, but she works nights as an end-of-life nurse, and the schedules never really link up. The person I get to see most is Aunt Lego, who was the first friend I ever really watched become a mother, raise kids, maintain her sense of self and her identity. She showed me that it could be done. And part of that is the insane busy schedule that means that really, no matter how often I make it to Ann Arbor (and it's not often), we probably won't meet up.
Last weekend, we went to Aunt Marla's wedding. We were in Ann Arbor for about eight hours. They were glorious.
I got to spend most of the day with Uncle Brony. I hadn't seen him since he came into town for my baby shower- when I was pregnant with DD and SI. He is one of my best friends in the whole world, and he still hadn't met my kids. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the people I'm closest to in the whole world haven't met them. They finally met my family this spring, my mother's side still haven't met RH and she's a whole year old, my oldest and dearest friend hasn't met them...
Me, center right, with Uncle Brony before
Prom. Yes, that's Aunt Genocide at the
far left
I'm happy for Uncle Brony, who walked my mother down the aisle at my wedding. He and I have been pretty much as close as they come since we were twelve years old and our Kadima trip to Cedar Point got rained out. We (and the piemaker, Aunt Genocide, and a now awesome slam poet), spent all day at the mall (some substitute for roller coasters!) playing at the arcade, skipping through the halls with our arms linked and singing The Wizard of Oz.
The only prom I ever went to, Uncle Brony was my date.
I'm so happy for Aunt Marla, who I've known for fourteen years, who I've watched freshly tattoo-ed and drunk, passed out in my hallway closet. She had a wedding utterly full of joy and laughter. It was wonderful- the bride and groom had the world's shortest ceremony (in an increasingly heavy rain), kissed four or five times, and then high-fived before traipsing down the aisle to the reception.
But no matter how long it's been since I've seen my friends, my real friends, the people who I always think of and remember and miss when I think of the people who know and love me...
No matter how long it is, nothing has changed. They are still the same people who made me feel that I belonged, who accepted me as I am from the first word, who loved me regardless of whatever stupid crap was going on in our lives.
And that kind of love isn't reserved for one person. They love me, and by extension they love M, and they love my children.
Uncle Brony with the kids
And it has been painful, at times physically so, to have so much life happen in between the few moments when we can actually spend time together, in real time and space, with real and wonderful things happening all around us.
It was amazing to watch Uncle Brony and the kids bonding- right now he's probably their favorite person in the world. To see his eyes fill with tears of love and joy when they jumped on him, hugged him, demanded to be carried to the dance floor and then to dance with him endlessly into the night...
He loves my kids, and they love him.
It was amazing to see Aunt Marla, who on her wedding day threw whatever plans she might have had out the window to dance with my children. Seriously- halfway through the first dance, she and her new husband broke apart so that she could welcome my kids, children she hadn't seen in three years onto the floor and dance with them just as her invitation described, awkwardly and enthusiastically.
Aunt Marla, on her wedding day, picked up my baby and waltzed off with her. She befriended that baby so fast and so fiercely that by the time I had to pry her out of the exhausted and joy-drunk bride's arms, she was reaching back to give her he sweetest little baby kisses you ever saw.
I'm playing Magenta here. I also played Janet, Frank,
and Trixie (the usherette/lips).
It was so intensely wonderful to see my old friends. Not many of them, they're too far flung. They're too distanced from their shady pasts. They've moved on.
There was never that tight a group of us to begin with.
There were so many groups that simply overlapped. Uncle Brony was in Rocky, but he was also a friend from middle school, from the neighborhood. Aunt Lego wasn't in Rocky, but she went to high school with most of the Rocky techies, she and I took classes together at community college, her step-sister and I went to high school together. There were a dozen different circles, mixing together like some weird three dimensional Venn diagram.
There is no group, growing up together. It's just not how we did things.
And I lament that. I wish that I could check in once or twice a year, meet all my friends' kids, see how much they've grown, swap stories about potty training or nursing woes or awkward in-law drama. But that's not what my friends did.
M's awesome friends, together at our wedding
Most of them aren't married. Most of them don't have kids. Those that do, did so sort of accidentally, without the usual bells and whistles. I know a lot of single dads from those days.
I don't think any of M's friends are single dads, or even single moms. They're all "responsible" adults, tattoo free (or at least VISIBLY tattoo free), married and procreating and working in professional jobs.
They do pretty much what you're expected to do when you grow up. College, grad school, law school, med school, marriage and then a kid or two, deployments to the middle east and the occasional getaway to the Dells or the Caribbean to relax and enjoy the stability of being 30 and following life's guidelines.
From what I can tell by voraciously stalking them on facebook and seeing most of them every Christmas and at least once a summer, they're all very happy.
My friends from those days are independent and/or struggling artists and musicians, they own local gyms and cleaning services, or they toured the country with their punk bands and gave it up to teach feminist summer camp. They're slam poets and pie activists and recovering alcoholics and etsy knitters. They became peace activists and pot farmers, they run Air B and Bs and organize open mics. They bake cakes and tattoo people and print t-shirts and ran off to Israel to become guitar playing rabbis.
And they're very happy, for the most part.
That's me delivering a speech at Aunt Lego's wedding
It's a very different group. And really, it's not a group, there's no cohesion. It's a pseudo collective of people who I know, who do or don't know each other, but who I am connected to through love and friendship.
When I was at Aunt Lego's wedding, I saw a lot of old friends from those days. But not all of them, not nearly all. And I only saw a few at Aunt Marla's wedding. And if Uncle Brony ever gets married, it will be yet another cross-section.
There will never be a day when the family is visiting somewhere, and all the people who knew me when, who got into trouble with me or made art or music or theater with me, who knew me back when I was a weird teenager and loved me then, there is no future day when we'll all sit down and have some cookies and watch our kids play together.
And it's sad to think it will never happen. But it's the way I expected my adulthood to be... you pay for that kind of bizarre freedom with a little loneliness later.
I wish Aunt Marla all the happiness in the world. I hope she takes me up on my offer and comes to visit us in Chicago. I hope all my old friends do.
My 16th birthday crew- only two of them are in regular
communication with each other these days.
I just also hope that, when my kids are older, they are fortunate enough to have a group of friends like M. A group who can grow together, and be there for each other, to reunite joyfully at these times.
It is one of the few things about normalcy I hope they can inherit from him.
But I hope what they inherit from me is the need for and the ability to find truly great friends. Friends who will go out of their way to be there for you, no matter how long it's been, no matter where they are on the earth or in life. Friends who remain friends despite any obstacle because their bond is one of the most important things that they have in this life.
When I say that my friends, my close friends, are my family... I mean it. I love them as intensely, as profoundly. I love their children simply because they are their children. I love their parents because they're their parents. I love their spouses because they love them. I worry for them when their loved ones are sick, I mourn for them when their loved ones pass away, I remember their birthdays regardless of facebook or birthday tracker or what-have-you.
When I think of the meaning of friendship, I think of the bond that no time, no distance can erase.
Uncle Brony dancing with my maid of
honor at my wedding
I think of the people who I have loved since the first, who have always loved me, who connect me with who I once was, with who I wanted to be.
I don't know if you can have both. I don't know if being close to your friends physically diminishes the emotional bond- I've never had the opportunity to know.
...even the friends who I have and consider close here in Chicago, who are physically near to me, I don't see very often.
But I do know that when your friendship is so strong, no distance can make you grow apart.
Next year, I'm going to my oldest and dearest friend's wedding, and I couldn't be more excited about it- sixteen months ahead of the happy day. I haven't seen her since M and I got married. I don't know when I'll see her again.
I also have no idea when the next time I'll see Aunt Lego and her family, or Aunt Marla and her husband, or Uncle Brony, or any of my old friends might be.
But they will always know how much I love them.
And I will never doubt how much love they have for me and mine.
At seven o'clock, the phone rang. It rang four times before I managed to get it to my ear and croak out a greeting.
It was as crazy as I look.
I had been in bed for six hours, and I knew it was only by the grace of God that I hadn't spent that time puking my brains out instead.
There's a reason you don't actually want to have your bachelorette party the night before your wedding.
It was the manager of one of the hotel where we had a block of rooms, and he was calling to tell me that he was going to charge me for every single one that hadn't been rented.
It was going to be $700.
Screaming for forty minutes on the phone with that hotel manager, and his wife, and a few other people, kept me from vomiting just a little bit longer. As my oldest and dearest friends snuck past my bedroom to find some coffee or toast while they waited for the day's insanity to commence, I vomited spectacularly.
The meal that nearly killed a groomsman...
And that was how my wedding day began.
Five years ago, as of this moment, I was taking M's anti-nausea pills- diagnosed for his chemotherapy treatments- so that I would stop puking long enough to set up the hall where we would be married.
The centerpieces were already made, but still in a few pieces. There were balloons- GIANT balloons- to be filled, lanterns to be strung, chocolates to be strewn around, linens to be steamed.
I wandered in a daze in and out of the kitchen, where Aunt Genocide was construction a spectacle of a cake, the likes of which may have never been seen before or since. Aside from the epic quantities of cake in the concoction for display, there were also half a dozen sheet cakes of the same. Batches and batches and batches of chocolate butter cream frosting, hundreds of gum paste forget-me-nots, one of my favorite flowers. And although we had not once discussed what would top the cake, hand dipped chocolate covered strawberries- on tuxedo dipped with a little bow tie, one in white, with a stem like a veil, a gum paste forget-me-not affixed like a bouquet.
Aunt Green watching Aunt Genocide make some magic
Just when I felt that I might finally be past the after effects of my utterly spectacular night of karaoke and penis crowns, my bridesmaids convinced me that I needed to wear makeup for my big day.
Yeah, that was when that decision was made.
And despite my protestations, mascara was applied. And a giant gloop of it fell into my eye.
As I cried and whimpered and sobbed and wept and begged for somebody to help me before I was covered in mascara tears and blind forever, my bridesmaids laughed their asses of at me.
I think we may have found the perfect Mother's Day tradition.
While I spend a glorious extra forty minutes in bed, M and the girls make breakfast.
Heart shaped goat cheese omelet? Yes please. :)
Over breakfast, I am presented with some goofy token of my family's appreciation of me as a mother.
You know. Because I love Star Wars. And despite sharing her name, have never dressed up as Princess Leia.
Everyone gets a chance to play with my silly new toy.
Space-Princess DD
Space-Princess SI
The girls don't care if they don't exactly get it, it's still fun.
The littlest Leia
Of course, M gets in on the action.
Princess Daddy
Then, like a freakin' rock star, M takes the kids out to run some "Special Mother's Day Errands," and I stay home. Alone. To, say, take a hot bath. Maybe the first real, long, hot bath I've had in five years. Maybe in so long I've actually forgotten how one enters a bath so hot it's nearly scalding. Maybe.
With an icy glass of dry soda, the Stravinsky's Firebird ballet, and tea-tree and lavender bubbles? Ohhh yess....
While I soak in the tub for a glorious 80 minutes, I actually get to read a book.
FYI- if you're into thrillers, mysteries, horror, that sort of thing... this is PHENOMENAL. I could go on hours about how brilliant this book is- if you can believe it, I would call it a feminist serial-killer-who-brutalizes-and-violates-women book. Didn't know that sort of thing exists. Well, it does, And it's awesome. It's US release is next month. (Many many many extra thanks to Poppa for bringing me back an inscribed copy from London!)
After my long hot soak, I take a long cool shower. Then the girls return laden with gifts for their incredibly refreshed, incredibly happy mother.
If you live in/near Chicago and you've never had chocolate or ice cream from Margie's Candies, all I can say is... what have you been doing with your wasted life?
After a quick lunch of muffins (also courtesy of M's "Special Mother's Day Errands") the kids ALL nap, and M and I lounge around and devour way too much of the fruits of his labors. You know, while I finish my book. For real.
Seriously- it's set in Chicago, it has references to The Maxx, it's filled with wonderfully crafted characters and vivd historical references, and it is SERIOUSLY a page turner. You want to read this book and talk to me about it.
After nap time. we play and cuddle and laugh and have fun for about two hours, and then head out to a restaurant for a delicious Mother's Day dinner.
This involves DD plastering every inch of exposed skin with her marinara sauce. I mean look at her, the kid is orange.
And then? Home. And bed.
I love my goofy girls. :)
...and of course, more chocolates. :) Best. Mother's Day, Ever.
.png)
