February 2016

Yesterday my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I drove over a curb after finding out, even though I’d taken my Emergency Trauma Solution flower essences. This was right after I ate a salad with wilted lettuce and I made some good suggestions and was told not to over react, not in that order.

Other things that happened yesterday:

I had a date with my beloved. I savored looking into his eyes and the fine food even though my mom has breast cancer. Afterward I sat beside my 15-year-old daughter praying for her to recover from her illness and my mom to recover from her cancer and me to stay sane and healthy until at last my daughter—who had a fever, chills and pain in her head, throat and neck—found peace and could sleep.

I stayed present.

I danced in a freezing gymnasium full of women.

I laughed a lot. For some reason, many things were funny yesterday. They weren’t all repeatable funny, but enough to make us chuckle. One of them: Juliet, our dance teacher called out over the loudspeaker: “Good Morning,” and because she was in the closet, we could see but not hear her so I said, “Good morning,” to the ceiling like it was God who had spoken, not her.

When Ilene hugged me goodbye after dance she said, “Have the day you have,” instead of the typical parting. I laughed because that’s really what always happens anyway, in spite all our best wishes, isn’t it?

At dinner with my sweetheart I ate kale with walnuts with lemon-drizzle dressing that tasted like hollandaise to start and then mussels in broth with capers and garlic and gluten-free bread soaked in olive oil and alternately spread with herb butter and sometimes also dipped into the broth.

My mom will be okay, I think, though of course I don’t KNOW. They caught it early. She’s a fighter. She told me that when I told my daughter about it to also tell her that she plans to beat it. That that IS the plan.

Hannah looked at me with infinite love and said, “She’d better.”

Also:

I rubbed my dog’s belly.

I printed the pieces for the board of directors’ packets.

I paid for my lunch and I tipped well while crying because my dad just told me on the phone, while still on the phone.

Also: I looked with Millie at pictures of her new grandbaby.

Also: I loved a lot.

Also: I started making the macaroni and cheese and my ex drained the noodles and added the hot dogs and stayed with Hannah and ate with her so I could go to dinner.

And I walked through the dark streets and bought recharge for her and held Christopher’s hand and when he wondered where would be the very best place for us to go: New Orleans? Paris? Greece?

I said, “Yes,” and “yes,” and “yes.”

That was yesterday.

Today, when I danced I felt my mom’s looming battle like a huge beam in my body…you know the kind they use to break open the castle door. But I kept dancing and the light filled me and filled the room and the beam became a branch, the kind that bends instead of breaking.

I have to go pick up my daughter soon because she made it through part but not all of her school day. She just keeps missing that honors geometry class. But they have a way for you to retake any class where you get a bad grade and have that grade replace the old grade. She said last night, “I feel like I can’t get a break: First my grandmother dies and then I get this crazy back injury, and then I get really sick, and now I get really sick again and my other grandmother has breast cancer.”

I said it was a good time to ask for health and support and for things to be easier. But not to ask for a break because when people do that sometimes they break their leg or something.

Now she’s in math. She wants me to come get her now, but she said she could tough it out until noon if it was better for me.

I want what’s better for her.

I think that’s to tough it out for herself, knowing I’ll be there right away once she can’t anymore?

Question mark because I seldom know. Am I doing this right? Am I parenting well? I have no idea.

I want to encourage her to be brave and strong, but for herself and because she can be…not for me, you know?

Meanwhile, my mother is up at the university teaching her class. She’s teaching it today having learned yesterday about her cancer. And then she’s meeting with her surgeon tomorrow. Bravery runs all over my family. We nurture and encourage and foster it and also must soften when appropriate.

So when Hannah texts back and asks, Will I’ll please pick her up at noon, even though math doesn’t end until 12:50, because “I can barely see the board.”

I say yes.

Yes, and yes.

Did I do that right?

I think maybe I did. But I don’t KNOW.

We have the day we have.