Hello, everyone!

Yep, we’re back. Some of you may be wondering how it went: the trip to Vienna, the flight back home. Vienna, of course, was wonderful. We had a place there which was billed as an apartment but was really one big room. It did have a small kitchenette, thankfully. Also, it mercifully had a partial walk-in closet just right for a crib. – When we first arrived, we were rather mortified to find the crib right there in the room, right next to our bed, across from the kitchenette. The place was supposed to be a ‘suite’ thus we figured it’d have another room, perhaps other walls. Luckily, we found the closet. Anyway, Vienna was marvelous. I cannot tell you how much apple strudel, kinder egg chocolate, and manner wafer cookies I stuffed down my gullet. Plus, there were the walks everyday (I love pedestrian cities!), the gardens, the naschmarkt. It was the Vienna we love – with a two year old, which made things rather interesting.  

Then there was the trip back home. You remember the one: 9 time zones, 23 hours of straight travel, 4 planes. Economy class. Oh, and did I mention that it was solo with a two year old? That was the kicker. I do love my child. Adore her. Thankfully. Even now.

Just let me give you a little taste of what May 4th was like. Picture this: we’ve already flown on three planes, traveling 19 hours, leaving Vienna at the crack of dawn. (Blessedly, Chris went with us to the airport.) We are now almost on the last plane on the final journey to Phoenix (where we will be coddled and brought back to health by Kim, my sister). Stella-Grace has had, oh I don’t know, at least three screaming fits already (one for each plane), but hasn’t completely snapped. Well, it happens: the big snap. You see, on the third flight (the one from Dulles to Chicago), she had finally succumbed to sleep, was deep into REM, when we touched down. Because the flight had been delayed getting out of Dulles, we were told that we would have to race to our connecting gate (our initial connecting time was going to be 45 minutes, and that was when the plane was on schedule). Thankfully, it’s only three gates away. So, we’re racing. Well, fast hobbling. Me, with a huge backpack, purse, baby carrier, baby blanket, Greenie the bear, and a large bag of S-G’s food along with a rather disgruntled bleary-eyed two-year-old. Said two year old doesn’t quite grasp the importance of getting to the gate on time. Greenie, the bear, understands completely.

Okay, you get the picture. But, oh, there’s more. So much more. All I can say is be grateful you weren’t a passenger waiting for the Phoenix flight out of Chicago. Yep. Confined space. At the gate. (And, of course, the flight is NOT leaving on time.) Equals screamage. Yes, screamage. At the top of one’s lungs screamage. Ear splitting, eye swelling screamage.

So, I’m doing all I can to stop it. Out of the backpack (the one, I might add, that is packed exclusively with S-G ware, not my own) comes books, crayons, little people, stickers, crackers, chocolate, all to no avail. Let me repeat, chocolate to no avail.

There’s this new kick that S-G is on, perhaps you’ve heard of it, it’s called the "I’m too sad" response. Usually it’s woefully said between tears, but on this particularly outing it was shrieked. Now, to the ears of the untrained, it may sound like garbled howls, but, oh, I know my baby and I could make it out (call it the miracle of nature).

So, here we all are, all the Southwest passengers waiting to board, all there in one cozy little confined space with my child (Child? What child? I’m sorry, at this point do I have a child? I thought I was a young, unfettered, urban professional. Oh right, that was in my dreams.) SHRIEKING at the top of her lungs. If you have never heard this particular shriek, oh are you in for some fun! Perhaps I’ll tape it and send it to you via e-mail audio. Surely it can be used as a prison or SEAL training exercise. You know the ones, used to induce disorientation and panic.

So, we’re here. Me sitting beleagueredly in a chair, hands flying from backpack to item in backpack to child trying to assuage this, this screaming thing in front of me. Up runs – literally runs – a flight attendant (I don’t know, perhaps while they were in the air she heard the screams from the ground) with a can of apple juice and one of water.

Smiling wanly, I grab them. "Thank you," I say, "I’ll try." Do I think this is going to work? No. Does she think it’ll work? Yes. Does it work? No. The "I’m too sad!" comes out loud and strong as does the batting away of the cans.

Next, a jovial man saunters over looking extremely confident, and childless. "Let’s pull out the big guns." I hear him say through the screams. In his hand is a Twix bar.

Now, did I mention that even chocolate didn’t work with this child (whom I would at this point refer to as rabid, that is, if she weren’t my own)?

"Hmm." I offer it to the child in front of me.

Oh, the joy of yet an even more resounding scream and a plaintive, "NO! I SAID I’M TOO SAD!"

When I turn around, the man-of-confidence is gone.

We board the plane (mercifully, unlike the European push and shove, people with children have priority) and grab the two seats in the second row on the left side. By this time, S-G is at a low-grade muffle and quiets when the once-spurned (but not holding a grudge) can of apple juice is produced with a straw. The "I’m too sad" cry is now replaced with the "I can do it myself" command. For those of you who don’t know, on Southwest you pick your own seat. They aren’t assigned. Well, we are in primo seats (second row). Yet, for some reason, not one person sits next to us, not in the whole row (even in the seats across the aisle). Two do sit in front of us, one behind. Bubonic plague could not have cleared the area sooner. Of course, once we are in the air, S-G flakes out and sleeps the entire flight. It makes for a blissful journey … except for the child way in the overcrowded back who screams all the way home. I tell you, some mothers! Why have children when they can’t control their own?!

The following Wednesday, after my Doxil treatment on Tuesday (we’ll get to that later), Tasha, my niece, exclaims, "You look better after the chemo than when I first saw you."

"Yeah" I explain, "that was just chemo. When I first saw you I had traveled across country with a two year old."   

On to the Doxil front … well, Cranmer, my oncologist, read the CT scans that I got upon my return home and decided on one more round to be followed by a re-evaluation of the situation next month (which means 18 more ounces of that ever pleasing barium shake they serve – yum yum). Apparently, almost all of the nodules (which, he oh-so-sensitively announced to be "hundreds of") in my lungs have remained the same size, except for one which has grown slightly. Thus, I had another treatment of Doxil two weeks ago. This go-round, while Chris was still in Vienna heading his delegation, Tasha came to head mine. Tash is my oldest sister’s daughter. She had some time between her studies at nursing school to administer to me, the chemo-infused.

Now, let me tell you, I love Tasha. Adore her. But, again, like the trip from Europe, I had a painted scenario of how things were supposed to go and I held on to it. Clung to it, actually. I should preface this by saying that I have grown accustomed to a certain level of care giving. My sister, Kim, is a prime example: the care giver who immediately – almost telepathically – knows my needs and caters to them. Caters with a smile. Kim is an angel on earth. Which, of course, is all good and well when you’re knocked out with nausea or debilitated by pain, but, and get this gentle reader, I wasn’t. I was feelin’ gooood! Goooood! But did I let a little thing like boundless energy get me to be appreciative? To be grateful for my lot: that I had a 22 year old babysitter and companion with whom to talk? OH no! Not me! Nooooo way! I had expectations. I had an agenda in my head and a description of how my caregiver should be. Even if I didn’t need one. And it wasn’t as if Tasha didn’t help. She did. But she didn’t help telepathically. The audacity! So, I was blessed, truly blessed, to have Tasha here, but instead of gratitude what did I show? Anger. Resentment. Why? Because she didn’t follow the script. And the crazy thing is, I was well enough that I could do things! Two days after chemo, I pulled our huge trashcan from the garage to the curb in the blazing hot sun … while carrying Greenie and followed by a two-year old. I was well! Am well. Yet did I acknowledge it? Did I thank God for this blessing? Nooooo! I wanted things to be different. I had a script. So I spent a lot of the time disgruntled, silently going through the litany of things that weren’t being done, at least not how I imagined they should have been. Tasha wasn’t Kim. Of course, she didn’t need to be. She just needed to be Tash, precisely right for right then. Still, I clung on.

So, my question is, how do I accept God’s gifts? How do I acknowledge them? For so long I’ve wanted things to be "just right," "just so," the way that I think they should go. The thing is, I’ve missed it. I’ve missed the gifts that were right there – are right there – right in front of me!

It wasn’t until Tasha left, when I awoke from my bed and didn’t see her outside, dangling her legs in the pool, that I missed her. Heart longingly, achingly, missed her. That’s how I’ve lived my life with a lot of things. That’s how I lived my life with Tasha’s mother. In my script, Julee (my oldest sister) wasn’t supposed to be manic-depressive. She wasn’t supposed to act the way she did, going off on wild tangents. Yet my soul needed her – needed her there. Just the way she was. Not until Julee was gone. Not until a long time after her suicide, after I’d written about it endlessly in notebooks and on the computer, did I realize how very much I missed her. How there was a hole. And how, just maybe, the way she led her life was precisely what I needed. Precisely right not only for her, but for me, too.

Maybe that’s what this lump on my leg is doing (not to mention the "hundreds" of nodules in my lungs). Maybe I’ll miss it when it’s gone. Maybe its existence is precisely what I need. Precisely now. Perhaps instead of guarding myself against it, or pretending it doesn’t exist, I should just love it. Let go and love it in all its splendor. I mean, how else would I know what to value if I didn’t have it? It’s given me the greatest of gifts: it’s allowed me to see.  

That doesn’t mean I don’t fantasize about being a fetterless passenger in the airport or a healthy patient catered to with frosty drinks and chilled cups. I do. But do you know what miraculous thing is starting to happen now? I’m starting to get it sometimes. I’m starting to realize how grateful I should be. (Usually at the cost of realizing how ungrateful I was.) Oh sure, it doesn’t happen until days or sometimes weeks after the incident, but it happens nonetheless. And I’m starting – starting – to take myself a little less seriously and realize that I’m human. When I realize this, it’s okay that I didn’t completely see how fortunate I was to go to Vienna with child, and come back. That I didn’t appreciate how very blessed I am to have a niece who will drop everything and come stay with me, even when I’m a hag-monster. And that’s okay. I’m human. I’ll try harder next time. Life is good. And it’s flawed. And it’s perfect. All at the same time. Pretty much how humans are. Now I just have to work on loving. Loving the whole. It’ll come. It always does.

So take care, you all. If there’s one bit of advice I would give to you before your travels: buy ear-plugs.

I love you,

Jennifer