The Beginning of the End

I got a letter from my uncle in Hawaii yesterday. One of my favorite letters of all time came from Uncle G a long time ago. I don’t remember what it said. I must have been about thirteen. It came in a plain white business envelope. On the front, next to my name, he had drawn a big oval. Standing next to the oval was a little man, combing his hair. He was standing with his back to me. But Uncle G. had drawn the front of him inside the oval, so it was clear that the oval-shape was meant to be a mirror. I was so impressed by how he’d done this, drawn the same person in the same pose, facing two different directions. The back of the envelope was even better.

There was the oval again, in the exact same place as on the front. There was the little man inside the mirror, in the same comb-raised-to-head position as on the front. But this time, he was only looking out of the mirror, not standing beside it. Beside the mirror, and above it and all around it, Uncle G had drawn ghosts and ghouls, floating curiously and peering in at the human on the other side. It was creepy, and thought provoking. I loved it.

Last night, C. showed me her jewelry. She has it divided into two categories; things she wears and things she doesn’t. The “wears” category was filled with things that radiate beauty and taste, just like C. does. The “doesn’t” category had a little more variety, but not much. There was a pair of gold and green earrings that made me think of pine needles. There was a silver chain with a heart-shaped pendant and a miniature mistrel player that she wore throughout high school. My favorite was a tiny gold pendant shaped like a songbird in flight. It had been a gift. She got it when she graduated eighth-grade.

Eighth-grade! My goodness. I can’t imagine.

I saved only two things from my childhood; a home-made teddy bear and a worn-out book of fairy-tales. They are so precious to me that I will probably never get rid of them. But that’s all. Everything else, every other physical possession I own, must be both beautiful and useful, or it goes to Goodwill. “Might be useful someday" just doesn’t cut it in my book. If I’m not using it now, then it’s not useful, and it goes. I guess that’s why the book and the bear escape my periodic purges. I still read the stories, I still sleep with Teddy when I’m scared and alone.

If I was more sentimental about stuff, I might have saved more things. If I didn’t abhor clutter I might own stacks of memorabilia. If I hadn’t moved so many times, my closets might be filled with boxes of things that make me smile and remember happy days. In this alternate reality where I value meaning over purpose, you can bet I would still have that letter from my uncle. At least, I would still have the envelope it came in.

That’s a long introduction. I’m really rambling this morning. I have a headache. I’m sure it’s because I ate most of an angel food cake for supper last night. Then, for dessert, I ate the rest of it. To make it a meal, I topped it with plain, sugar-free, non-fat, organic yoghurt and fresh strawberries, so it seemed almost healthy. For dessert, I just ate cake.

What I really want to write about this morning is privacy, and how little of it I have.

Uncle G says he's enjoying my blog. It's so funny to hear this from people. Of course, it makes sense that he reads it sometimes. I'm sure I gave him the address myself. But, it never occurs to me that he might be reading it. It never occurs to me that anyone is reading it unless they tell me, and then I usually forget. I probably couldn't keep writing if I really thought about everyone out there whom these words might reach.

He wrote, "I've been following your health-saga as closely as I can from my perch here in the middle of the Pacific, thanks to your fantastic blog!"

He wrote, "It's very interesting reading about your thoughts and feelings at this time in your life."

He wrote, "I have to shake my head at your generations's openness about your lives. Can you imagine Grandma's generation sharing such intimate details of their lives with so many people?"

I have to admit, no I can't. I can't imagine my grandmother sharing such intimate details of her life with anyone at all. Why do I do it? It really does seem to be a generational thing. Why are we twenty and thrirty-somethings shameless enough to turn ourselves inside out for public inspection? Why are we narcissistic enough to think that anyone would want to look?

I've been thinking a lot about generational differences lately. My current romantic interest and I reach out to each other across a distance of fourteen years. It's weird. I ask my self if I can ever really understand and know intimately someone who can remember the day Kennedy was shot, whose childhood wasn't fraught with muppets, who has been a full-grown adult for exactly twice as many years as I have? And, as importantly, will I ever really be understood in return?

I watched the first half of "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" last night. I haven't watched it since I was old enough to understand what's going on. Even thought I know what's coming, I'm shocked to see Katherine Hepburn's loving, liberal, well-educated character break out in a cold sweat as she realizes her daughter intends to marry this man. This man is, of course, the almost unbearably dignified and respectable Sidney Poitier playing an internationally admired medical doctor, author, and humanitarian.

What makes his uprightness bearable is the abandon with which he shows his character to be madly in love with the sparklingly oblivious girl, Joey. His boy-swoons are the final touch that solidifies the first three words of this movie's theme. He is perfect, and yet.

And yet, they can't see him marrying his daughter. They can't see him because he's so different from them. They can't see him because his background, his family, his experiences are so completely alien to theirs.

I think in my grandparent's generation, there were more shortcuts to intimacy. If you stayed within your own narrow group, you didn't need to ask probing questions or open yourself up to unprotected scrutiny. If you and another person shared the same background of race, class, education and culture you could make a lot of (mostly correct) assumptions. Of course, for married couples, there was the inevitable gulf between male and female perspectives. But that one was easily dealt with. Father knew best and women adjusted their ideas, or at least their actions, accordingly.

Despite certain politicians' myopic nostalgia for that world, it's not the one we live in anymore, and my generation knows it. Maybe this is what inspires our unabashed self-exposure. We want to be seen and understood, not just by the people who share a common history with us, and can thus imagine pretty accurately what's going on inside us. We want to be seen by everyone.

As a white girl who grew up poor but middle class in a liberal single-parent family just over the southern edge of the East Coast, I want to be understood by the Armani-suited man I met at the coffee shop whose parents emigrated from India in 1969 and still practice medicine together in his home town of San Diego. I want to be understood by the red-headed redneck drinking whiskey from a bottle at a tailgate party on the frozen surface of lake whose name sounds like ducks-in-a-keg. I want to be understood by the 8 year old girl in Santa Fe whose born-again christian parents think she has a sinful nature and by the brawny ex-football coach who lives on a sailboat with his dog and by the super-model-pretty Kenyan woman who grew up in boarding school and drives four hours each way to get her hair done.

And I want to understand them back.

I can't enjoy either the miracle of being understood, unless I'm generously and courageously honest. And setting an example of how to do so, increases the chances that other people will do it too.

So that's the "why," but where's the "how?" How is it we have the guts to risk public ridicule and invite private distain? How do we garner the nerve to stand at the edge of our keyboards, tossing our doubts and fears into the pool of public knowlege? How dare we boast about our happiness when others are suffering and whine about our failures when we know we brought them on ourselves?

I don't know. Is it like jumping off a cliff; all our friends are doing it?

I started blogging because my loved ones had a desire and a right to know what was happening in my unemployed, cancer-obsessed life, and I was too tired to call them back or write to them individually. I kept at it because I want other cancer patients to be able to learn from my experience, and maybe have a better one. I wrote intimate and personal things because I saw a need for it. Most of the literature on breast cancer is dry. Lots of it is funny. Some of it is honest. Once in a while someone admits how wrenching it is to rehearse the words "ductal carcinoma" while dialing your mom's phone number. But, nobody I found would discuss the sickening sight of your own bloody tumor scraps laid out on a glass plate or the practical details of finding the right-sized prosthesis.

I was able to do it because after that double whammy day, I felt like I didn't have anything else to loose. Also, cancer threw my precious-treasure nature into sudden stark relief. If my own life was so valuable that I was terrified of losing it and hell-bent to keep it, well then, there must not be anything too ridiculous or embarrassing about it. This attitude keeps getting stronger as you, my mysterious and multiple readers, keep telling me how grateful you are that I have spared modesty and shame to bring you the real story of these last few months in my life.

But, this post is only slightly related to getting fired and having cancer. It's mostly about cake and Sidney Poitier and my uncle in Hawaii. It's about muppets and dating and gold pendants. It's about ghosts and teddy bears and a generation of bloggers.

When my mom was staying with me in California, we saw Mama Mia at the theatre with a bunch of my friends. We sighed at the scenery, laughed at the boys dancing in flippers, groaned at Peirce Brosnan's voice, sang along with Meryl Steep, and threw popcorn at each other. It was the best 90 minutes I'd had since the first full day after my diagnosis. It was the only 90 minutes I'd had where I didn't think about the fact that I had cancer; not even once.

Look at me now! I think about all kinds of things that don't have anything to do with cancer!

This post is similar to the one where I talk about going running for the first time. On that day I finally felt like I had my body back. Today, I finally feel like I have my mind back. Someday soon, I won't have any tears left to cry when I look at my naked chest in the mirror, and then I'll know I have my heart back too.

And then, when I have written everything useful I can think of relating my doublewhammy adventure, and I'm all moved in to my new post-crisis life, I will end this blog.

But not just yet.







P.S. I lifted "fraught with muppets" off a blog called Momapop. Anyone who grew up with Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, the Muppet Movies and, my personal favorite, Pigs in Space, should understand the charm, threat, and accuracy of this phrase. I couldn't resist it.