A Million Words

It’s been a few months now since I entered remission from the double bout of melanoma last fall and winter.

Since then, I have moments where I realize things have changed forever but mostly my brain still hasn’t caught up to the new reality. Some lasting changes are that I have to take stairs a little more deliberately and I can’t do all of the moves in my exercise class. Suddenly, I’ll have a moment of awareness where I get it’s not getting older that’s making something more difficult, it’s the aftereffects of cancer.

Frankly, I’m stubborn so I push against that notion and try harder.

The other noticeable change is I get asked a lot how going through cancer has changed the way I see things. The answer depends on the day I get asked. Mostly, I’m not as sure that I’m going to be around for at least another thirty years or maybe I just think about it more.

The question also makes me feel grateful, once again, that I jumped out of that plane last June because for some reason surviving that has made me feel like my odds of living to be an old woman are better. It’s not quite logical but neither is jumping out of a perfectly good plane.

The one consistent thought I do have these days is about what I’ll leave behind for my son, Louie. I wonder whether or not it will be enough to sustain him for whatever comes up in his life.

I don’t own much so it’s not going to be a lasting mark financially. Fortunately, I do have a pushy insurance agent, Jerry, who insisted I take out a life insurance policy a few years ago, so there’s that. I’m no longer eligible for new policies unless I remain cancer free for the next four and a half years.

And, I’m not sure Louie was really listening when I was handing out profound advice and I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s a good thing. Advice is way too subjective to be of any real use and he’s got a good head on his shoulders.

So, my legacy is going to have to be the million words I’ve already left behind that float around in archives, three books and hundreds of columns so far. A million words of how I was feeling about something on any given day about almost any topic. I’ve really held very little back.

Hopefully, they’ll serve as a guide of sorts for him to being himself and celebrating all of the wonder the world has to offer. I’m hoping there’s a few laughs buried in there as well.

Even if I live to be ninety if my past is any guide I’m not sure there will be much more than words left behind me anyway. So far, making money or acquiring stuff has not come naturally to me. I’m still hoping that’s not going to be a life long trait and there’s a bestseller in there somewhere but I’m fifty, there’s a Great Recession going on and I’m just not sure.

The last book, A Place to Call Home, is a memoir that chronicles my side of things as Louie found sobriety and I found some kind of peace and any kind of sense of humor. Even now, I go back and reread passages from the darkest times and I’m reminded of just how fortunate we are today. That’s one of the bigger blessings of a trail of words. It’s possible to see clearly just how much things have really changed and breathe a sigh of relief.

But, I also hope Louie sees just how strong he was in the middle of it all. There were some very hard times but even in the worst of it neither one of us gave up on the other. That’s saying something.

Right now, there are other families reading this who are trying to figure out how to connect with each other and reach a better day. Perhaps some of our story can help them find hope or even lasting change as well. That would be part of the legacy then as well.

Sometimes, it’s not the triumphs that are remembered by everyone and serve as some kind of guide. Sometimes it’s the places where we fumbled through and carried on with as much love as we could muster that gives everyone who bears witness to it a lasting piece of hope.

And in the Role of Mother

As we get older we change roles from child to adult and maybe to parent, and from student to person-stuck-in-cubicle-working-long-hours.

However, most of us regard our parents as frozen in some kind of alternate universe where they never change and still feel the same way about everything. To us, they are in the last role of their lives except for maybe some day getting to add on the tag of grandparent.

Whatever our parents said when we were twelve still goes when we’re thirty-five. It doesn’t matter if Mom protests vigorously that she’s changed her mind about dining out at places with actual dishes. She said she preferred Wendy’s that one time and we’re going to make her stick to her word.

This is one area of our life that we can count on to not change and be rock solid certain. Boy, that’s a relief.

That is, until our children start to grow up and make sly, little jokes about us in front of their friends, while we’re present, as if we can’t really hear them. Suddenly, our own miscreant behavior comes back to bite us.

My son, Louie, who’s 22 makes sure that I never try to carry anything that weighs more than five pounds. That’s a dilemma for me because I am freakishly strong but hate toting things. Do I correct him by picking up some large object or take a seat and enjoy watching him work? So far, I’ve been taking a seat and I’m a little concerned that’s how old age gets you.

Louie is also convinced that I don’t know how to use any new technology and I’m too afraid to learn, can’t stay up past eleven o’clock and don’t recognize any current tunes. In response I like to randomly start singing parts of rap songs when he’s around, which totally weird’s him out, dude.

Yes, I know that last statement is going to only encourage him to think I’m dotty, but that’s okay. It’s starting to feel like part of my role as mother to amuse my only child with my un-coolness. Maybe for awhile we all need to believe that there are touchstones in our little world that don’t change and are therefore reliable.

Last weekend, I had a chance to enlarge my role as mother of Louie and go to his girlfriend, Kathy’s aunt and uncle’s house for Easter on the south side of Chicago. Kathy’s mother, MaryBeth, has nine siblings who are all married and have children and a few grandchildren, and there’s her grandmother, Mary. They were all there at various parts of the day.

Huge Irish Catholic family who all live in the same neighborhood, except for Uncle Mike who moved over one town to Aurora, which no one can figure out why. They were funny, loud and enveloped me as if I was one of their own even going so far as to tell me, “If you get to your feet, you lose your seat.”

There was also a good story about a Brite-Lite that never got picked up out of the shag carpet by Kathy or her brother Bill, or her sister Julie over twenty years ago. So, MaryBeth lived up to her word and drove them to the poor box where Bill was sent to drop it in while the girls watched forlornly from the car. However, last year there was some closure when MaryBeth gave each of them a replacement for Christmas.

All day long I was introduced as, Martha, Louie’s mom and everyone responded with that, ‘oh’ of recognition as they shook my hand. It was my first occasion as mother of the grown child at the serious girlfriend’s family’s house. It made me happy to see that Louie had managed to fall in with such a large, rollicking family. And, bottom line, as long as I know who I am and love what I see, it’s okay to let go of how everyone else describes me. More adventures to follow.