water + rest

simple things to keep you going

photo by Annie Musso

In my efforts to reestablish my midlife writing career--put on hold by a 4-year caregiving stint--I committed to writing at least one essay a week and publishing it on Mondays through Substack. (Many of you are supporting me in this endeavor and I appreciate it more than you know.) And then--I missed a week. By Tuesday evening, I was still thinking I could get it out, but by Thursday afternoon, I was resigned to the fact that I would have to miss a week. The reason was legitimate: My daughter Annie started her first chemo that Friday and I was consumed by the tests, prep and babysitting required for such an enormous, scary and stressful event.

I’m no stranger to cancer; I haven’t had it, but my Mom died from lung cancer and my sister died from ovarian cancer. But when it’s your daughter...well, for me, it flung my world out past recognizable boundaries and my day-to-day life hasn’t resumed any familiarity yet.  The diagnosis brought Angelo home from Italy where I was supposed to have joined him for his undetermined length of residence. There was no way I could go and no way he could stay. I was about to become velcroed to Annie’s side for the foreseeable future.

The first trip to the doctor to check out the lump was over a month ago and now we’re sharing calendars for weekly chemo treatments. In an absolutely unexpected and gratifying turn of events, Annie and I had three days alone after her first two tests to just be together with the news...it wasn’t official yet, but we were pretty certain what it was. Angelo hadn’t returned home yet and Tony and Luca had headed up to Maine for an early start to their vacation. We spent three whole nights laughing, crying, joking, crying and just being with each other as we hadn’t in I don’t know how many years. She’s been uncharacteristically open about the whole thing--she told close friends at first and then shared with her social network, both actual and virtual. I was glad she did, because we all knew I was going to write about it eventually. We were all going to have to figure out how to be with this whole new world; all of us adjusting our needs and plans. All I wanted to do was buy her stuff--I couldn’t stay off of Amazon or out of Marshall’s--but even that ability has been impacted. After our “Chemo Education session” I went into the Dollar Store for some school supplies and grabbed her a bag of Candy Corn. I knew it was lame, which she confirmed as I handed it to her and got one of those looks that says, “Really?” Deservingly so.

For now, I’m going to try and focus on keeping myself healthy so I can be there for Annie and our family. For the last year of caregiving--which was also a pandemic--I had started giving myself permission to just sit and do nothing every once in awhile—I was “resting.” And then I “rested” every day. And each time I worked hard at remembering to drink water, because stress literally wrings you out and staying hydrated is one simple way to combat the ill effects of--well, almost everything. (Years after running Dad to the ER several times for what was diagnosed as TIAs, we discovered that he was actually experiencing bouts of dehydration--it mimicked the same symptoms.) My new mantra is “water + rest” but I am also going to stay connected to the things that fill me up and keep me sane--teaching and writing. And I’m not giving up wine.

I started wearing a bracelet that my friend gave me. It says WARRIOR.  I don’t typically wear jewelry because for one thing, I’m allergic to most metals and I get a rash. It also clunks around and gets stuck on my wrist and gets in the way when I write. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about announcing myself as a “warrior.” It’s not like I’m the aggressive sort...I like to think I’m more subtle. But not now...I’m going to be aggressive as hell in this fight. And the inconvenience of a little rash or some bumping around is nothing compared to what Annie is going through. If a warrior is what it takes, then a warrior is what I’ll be.