Writing Through Cancer

I admit it.  I haven’t quite realized Christmas is upon us; the lingering effects of our trip to Japan at Thanksgiving, the nostalgia for our time there after our return, and a sense of disbelief, “What?  It’s already December 21^st?”  In years past, I’ve been much more organized in my holiday preparations, including a long-standing tradition of sending holiday greetings by mail to friends and family around the world.  This year, I’ll be sending New Year’s wishes instead, since I’ve failed to get any Christmas cards written and mailed.  Even though fewer and fewer of our friends or acquaintances maintain the tradition of sending holiday greetings by mail, I love the Christmas cards we continue to receive.  In this rush-rush world of ours, where communication is dominated by email or texts sent electronically, I cherish the notes, photographs and messages from old friends.  They re-kindle memories and connections, experiences shared together in years past.

This week we received a card sent from Germany, a greeting from a friend of our daughter’s, remembering the one Christmas he spent at our house in California several years ago, far from his home in England. That year was also the last Christmas holiday that we—my daughters, husband and I— celebrated Christmas all together. Just one year later,  Elinor called from Beirut to say “Merry Christmas,” and the following year,  Claire  traveled to Florida to spend the holidays with her ailing grandparents and meet the man who would become her husband.

Since that time, my husband and I have traveled to spend Christmas with one daughter or the other.  Depending on who is living where in the world, one or the other sometimes comes to us.   But now they are creating traditions and memories with their husbands and children, while we are  less willing to join the crowds of holiday travelers or brave the winter weather.   This Christmas, we’ll content ourselves with visiting friends and sharing greetings with our grandchildren via Skype.

It’s a bittersweet time for me.  There’s nothing more joyous that celebrating the holidays with my grandchildren, reading  Clement Moore’s The Night Before Christmas, baking cookies, stuffing stockings with clever little surprises, and sharing in the children’s excited shrieks as they discover what Santa left under the tree Christmas morning.  There’s nostalgia too, the ones tied to Christmases long past.

…Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang “Cherry Ripe,” and another uncle sang “Drake’s Drum.” It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. 

(From: “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” By Dylan Thomas)

Last night, after a day and evening spent with friends we drove home to our neighborhood, alive with colored lights and decorations.   I couldn’t help but remember how, when I was a child, we’d climb into our old Ford station wagon  to drive through our small town and admire the display of lights and decorations each year, or how we’d made the annual trek into snowy wilderness with Dad to cut the perfect tree.  Our tree was adorned with bubble lights and themed decorations, packages piled beneath the branches–ones we would try to feel or shake days before they were to be opened.  And always, there was Christmas day, when  dozens of cousins, aunts and uncles gathered together for the holiday meal– all of us singing carols.

There are other memories—ones less romantic but yet,  every bit a part of our family’s Christmas traditions.   Yearly, I was assigned the task of painting a Christmas scene in our large picture window, my mother ever hopeful we would win a prize in the “best Christmas window decoration” contest each year.  My artwork was colorful but untrained, and I was mildly embarrassed to have my work on such public display.  The honorable mention I earned one year only reinforced my fear that, despite my desire to be, I wasn’t really an artist.  And there were annual rituals, like my mother always registering her disappointment when we came home with the freshly cut tree.  It was never perfect enough to her liking, and after we got it in the house, there was the inevitable argument over the correct placement of lights.  My father agonized over a Christmas gift to buy her each year;  I remember only one year that she actually liked what he’d gotten for her.  And all three of us held our breaths each year as my father offered his present to her.  As much as I disliked these regular bits of unpleasantness, they were part of our annual Christmas traditions, and years later, became part of the family stories we told each year, just as woven into the fabric of our holidays as the carols we sang, the stockings we hung from the mantle or excitement we shared on Christmas morning that were remembered as well.

As children, we knew there was more to it –
why some men got drunk on Christmas Eve
wasn’t explained, nor why we were so often
wear tears nor why the stars came down so close,

Why so much was lost. Those men and women
who had died in wars started by others,
Did they come that night? Is that why the Christmas
tree
trembled just before we opened the presents?

There was something about angels. Angels we
have heard on high Sweetly singing o’er
the plain. The angels were certain. But we could not
be certain whether our family was worthy tonight.

(From:  “A Christmas Poem,” by Robert Bly, in Morning Poems,1998)

 Whatever your holiday traditions, reflect on those family celebrations you shared.  What memories are most fond?  What’s most vivid or poignant?  Write about holidays past—family traditions you remember fondly or even those you don’t.  Family holidays and the memories of them offer rich material for stories

May your holidays be filled with friends and family, a time of remembering what truly matters, a time of gratitude, a time of peace.

 

 

Read Full Post »

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little…

 

look      the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

 

put up your little arms

and i’ll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy

 

then when you’re quite dressed

you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see…

 

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we’ll dance and sing

“Noel Noel”

(From:  [little tree] by e.e. cummings.  In:   100 Selected Poems by e. e. cummings. © 1959.)

We returned from Japan late on Wednesday night, and since, have been re-adjusting to the time difference, our minds and bodies sluggish by day, alert by night.  Yesterday we ventured out to run errands, which necessitated exposing ourselves to the crowded markets and malls—never a welcome activity in the midst of the holiday season.  We didn’t shop for much.  This year our family will again be spread out over three countries, my daughters and husbands creating their holiday traditions and memories for their children as we once did for them.

We have dispensed with our traditional large Christmas tree and opted for a “junior” version, just three feet tall, to be placed in the front window. We’ve already begun passing along some of the Christmas tree ornaments we’ve collected every year with both daughters, hoping that the forty-plus years of stories retained in each will be remembered, shared and laughed about together with their children.  Some of those decorations remain here, since my sentimental nature prohibits me from abandoning old traditions all at once, even if John and I will greet Christmas morning without the excitement and clamor of excited children.

I suspect I’ll linger over the papier-mâché gingerbread boy, now with only one eye and a piece of his hand torn off, hung on my parents’ tree when I was a child or the hand painted Santa that began our tradition, given to my oldest daughter by her grandmother when she was just three months old.  There’s a small felt Christmas tree, decorated with glitter and the traces of rows of brightly colored “Smarties,” the Canadian equivalent to “M & Ms,” her sister made in first grade.  The candy melted long ago or perhaps was eaten by the ornament maker.  A painted ballerina made of dough, baked and glazed, is missing her pink slippers. We discovered our dog, Max, quietly nibbling them off one Christmas when we were living in Toronto.  It’s one of my favorites and occupies a central place on the tree, despite her missing feet.  And there is the small framed photo of my father, taken just a week or two before he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.  His smile radiates from a place near the top of the tree.

It’s not only the ornaments on our tree that hold the memories of holidays past.  As we see colored lights strung on houses around the streets of San Diego, we remember how, as children, our fathers drove us through neighborhoods to see the array of lights and holiday decorations that adorned each house.

 

Though a potpourri

Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,

We all are conscious of the time of year;

We all enjoy its colorful displays

And keep some festival that mitigates

The dwindling warmth and compass of the days…

(From:  “Toward the Winter Solstice,” by Timothy Steele; In:  Toward the Winter Solstice, 2006))

There are memories in the traditional holiday dishes and cookies baked or given as gifts.  Our neighbor brings us a loaf of hot gingerbread each year, and the scent alone will transport me back to my grandmother’s kitchen.  I’ve made my mother-in-law’s broccoli soufflé nearly every Christmas since I was a new bride, the recipe copied on a stained 3 x 5 inch index card.  I no longer bake Christmas cookies.  That task was eagerly assumed by my daughters when they were in elementary school and have all but disappeared from my repertoire.

This year will be only the second time since my husband and I wed that we’ve not celebrated the holidays with one or both of our daughters.  History repeats itself I suppose, because I remember how we, living far from our parents, celebrated our first lonely Christmas in Canada decades ago.  As our daughters were born, our traditions were born, ones I recall fondly every holiday season.  A wealth of stories exists in those memories, and again, they will likely be told and re-told, just as we tend to do every year.

Writing Suggestion:

As you prepare for your holiday season, what family traditions do you cherish and keep alive?  What stories get told and retold?  The holidays can also trigger emotions as we remember people and past holiday events.  Write about the holidays—the rituals, traditions and preparations you practice, the stories you recall each year.

Read Full Post »

It’s a windy day in Okinawa, hardly unusual for this island prefecture of Japan.  My daughter and her family, along with my husband, are out at a local farm picking hibiscus blossoms to make into tea and jelly, an invitation from her friend, Kazumi.  I, meanwhile, nurse an aching lower back, the result of over-doing my romps with two delightfully creative and active grandchildren.  It also means that any length of time sitting at the computer is defined by pain.  Thus, I offer you a post written over two years ago, when I was again visiting my daughter in this far away place.  At the time, I arrived just at the end of typhoon season, and the theme of turbulence, in weather and in life, was the inspiration for the post.  As I think about leaving this delightful place, the warmth and kindness of the Okinawans, I can’t help but feel a little sadness for my daughter and her family.  After five years here, they will be leaving a place they’ve loved deeply to return to the U.S., as the military demands.  The freedom, gentleness and warmth of this island is all my grandchildren have ever known, but as my daughter puts it, “they will be on a much shorter leash” as they adjust to life in the U.S.  and nightly news dominated by terrorism, violence and shootings.  Turbulence, the upset that comes with these kinds of adjustments, may also dominate the first weeks of their return.

---

(Previously posted October 13, 2013)

I would settle now for just one perfect day
anywhere at all, a day without
mosquitoes, or traffic, or newspapers
with their headlines.

A day without any kind of turbulence—
certainly not this kind, as the pilot tells us
to fasten our seatbelts, and even
the flight attendants look nervous.

(From:  “Three Perfect Days,” by Linda Pastan)

Over a week ago, on the first Saturday after my arrival in Okinawa, a typhoon swept across the island.  I’d felt the first vestiges of the approaching storm as I flew from Tokyo to Okinawa, a somewhat turbulent three-hour flight that kept me grasping my arm rests.  I was noticeably relieved when the plane finally touched down in Naha.   Just over a day later, I sat inside my daughter’s concrete house and watched as sheets of rain streamed down the long glass windows and bent the trees along the nearby river.  “I’m certainly glad I got here before the storm did,” I said.

We had only a short reprieve from the rain and wind before hunkering down again on Monday, preparing for the arrival of Typhoon Danas, a stronger storm which, as the day progressed, shifted direction and took aim to the north of us.   But the turbulent weather isn’t over yet.   This morning my son-in-law scanned the radar images of the Pacific and reported another typhoon due on Tuesday.  It will be another day inside, but thankfully, short-lived.  Typhoons are a regular event each autumn, just as hurricanes are along the Gulf coast, and Okinawans are well equipped for them.  But for me, who lives in a climate where changes in weather are barely discernible, the idea of flying across the vast Pacific where tropical storms are plentiful had me a little nervous.  Turbulence is not something I enjoy.

Storms, turbulence:  these are metaphors for chapters of our lives, aren’t they?  Google “storms,” “turbulence,” and “cancer,” and you’ll find more than a few blog posts, book titles and articles written by people who have experienced cancer or other serious and debilitating life events.

In an article entitled “Cancer’s Perfect Storm of Pain,” P.J. Hamel writes:

After you hear those words, “You have cancer.”

That’s when the pain begins.

The emotional pain that comes from cancer takes many forms. There’s the searing pain of imagining your children without their mother. The dull, systemic pain of figuring out how to tell those you love. And the jagged, intermittent lightning strikes: They’re going to cut off my breast. My hair is going to fall out. What if I lose my job?

(In: Health Guide, www.healthcentral.com, September, 2013)

Turbulence has been on my mind, and it’s not just about another impending typhoon.  It’s the shift from the quiet and more routine life I lead to this temporary one of navigating the challenges of caring for two pre-school grandchildren, a boy and a girl, as my daughter lies upstairs, recovering from her abdominal surgery of this past week.  Shrieks of laughter can quickly become loud wails of complaint as small storms as one decides that he or she wants the toy or book that the other has.  Both children loudly protest naptimes as I herd them upstairs to their rooms after lunch, and once they have settled down for an hour’s nap, I make a few more trips up and down the stairs to tend to my daughter’s needs before they awaken.

Turbulence.  I think of young mothers dealing with cancer or being the primary caretaker to a loved one with small children, and I’m completely humbled.  How do you navigate through the turbulence of daily life, much less the larger storm of cancer?  We all have our coping mechanisms, ways of helping ourselves ride out the storm.  For me, writing has always been important as a way to make sense of the chapters of life that up-end me from time to time.

Julie McCoy, an Irish author, commented on the process of writing her debut novel, Eye of the Storm, saying “Writing has always been this for me: peeling back the visible layer to see the much more interesting and meaningful stuff underneath. But more than that, it is a coping mechanism, a way of setting this overwhelming world straight on a page, a way of dissecting tragedy, love, life and trying to make sense of it all.”

(Posted on www.Writing.ie, the home of Irish writing online, 2013)

Coping, setting the world straight on a page, making sense of it.  It’s why writing can be such a powerful way to write yourself through the storms of life, of cancer, hardship, or loss.  This week, write about one of those turbulent chapters you’ve experienced.  What was the event?  Describe how it felt or what happened.  What helped you navigate through it all?

Read Full Post »